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Puya raimondii, also known as the Queen of the Andes (English language), titanka and ilakuash (Quechua) or puya de Raimondi (Spanish language), is the largest species of bromeliad, its inflorescences reaching up to in height. It is native to the high Andes of Bolivia and Peru.
The Botanical name of raimondii commemorates the 19th-century Italian scientist Antonio Raimondi, who immigrated to Peru and made extensive botanical expeditions there. He encountered this species in the region of Chavín de Huantar and published it as new to science under the name Pourretia gigantea in his 1874 book El Perú. In 1928, the name was changed to Puya raimondii by the German botanist Hermann Harms, as the combination Puya gigantea was already used for a Chilean species.
Genetic analysis firmly places Puya raimondii in subgenus Puya within the larger Puya genus.
The inflorescence is typically tall, but can measure as much as tall. The stem supporting the flowering stem is quite thick, with a diameter of and is just tall. When flowering the whole plant may reach as much as , though more typically they are between and in height. Antonio Raimondi estimated the number of blooms as over 8,000 while Anthony Huxley estimated their number at 20,000. They are produced over several months starting in May or June and continuing as late as mid-December, though the floral spike will have reached its maximum size by October.
The individual flowers have greenish-white petals that are often somewhat purple. The petals are 6–8 cm long and curve to a bluntly pointed end. Each flower has three petals and three . The sepals are lanceolate, shaped like the head of a spear with a pointed tip and 4 cm long.
The seeds ripen over the following months and are ready to be spread by the following July. As soon as the seeds are ripe the gigantic plant dies completely. Estimates by Asunción Cano and co-authors are that each plant may produce 12 million seeds. They are contained in round to egg shaped capsules that are 2.5–3 cm long. The seeds are quite small, each one including the wing around its edge is just 3–5 millimeters across. The fruiting stalk is quite rich in resins and therefore the plants burn quite readily.
Its reproductive cycle (and life) in its native habitat lasts 40 to 100 years, though one individual planted near sea level at the University of California Botanical Garden, bloomed in August 1986 after only 28 years. It is monocarpic, a plant that dies after reproduction. Unlike all other bromeliads it does not reproduce vegetatively and is entirely dependent on the recruitment of a new generation from its seeds.
The plant has been identified to form a close relationship with pollinating birds, and was even hypothesized to be a protocarnivorous plant due to its abilities to ensnare birds in the spiny fronds. However, the adaptations seen in Puya that lead to ensnarement of birds seems most likely to be instead a defense mechanism.
Both and visit the flowers for nectar. The black metaltail hummingbird ( Metallura phoebe) lives in the stands of this and other puyas high in the Andes, though its nests have only rarely been observed and not in the crown of Puya raimondii. The black-winged ground dove ( Metriopelia melanoptera) and the Ash-breasted sierra finch ( Phrygilus plebejus) have both been observed nesting the crown of the plant, though this is occasionally dangerous with the ground dove occasionally becoming trapped by the spines. Birds as large as the widespread barn owl ( Tyto alba) have lost their lives in puyas.
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