I wish I knew more about the one my parents had but growing up, we just called it "the airplant." I asked my mom about it last night and she says it died, sadly. However, lightning struck one of their trees and my father found a piece of bark with a bunch of smaller airplants attached to it that he's trying to nurture.

Last year when I was in St. Petersburg Florida and went to Sawgrass lake park there were some massive ones in there!

The biggest was way up in a tree and was about 3 feet and had a huge flower stalk growing.

Makes me jealous of all you Floridarians with your free Tillandsias!

I live in California now so I never see Tillandsias but when I was growing up in Florida, they were all over the place. I wish I could get a photo from my parents of the one they had in its prime. It was enormous but I may be wrong in calling it a Tillandsia because it didn't really look like T. utriculata. It was actually quite bulky and dense with layers but it was growing on a tree and then spent several years growing on a piece of wood reinforced by plastic coated wire growing from the side of our wooden house. I wish I could remember it better. I saw it daily for years but that was almost 20 years ago.

Charon, if you recall the street address of the house, or even just the street name, and if the plant was on a side of the house that could be seen from the street, you might be able to travel down that street via Google maps. The house and the plant might still be there (unless the house and neighborhood were all removed for a shopping center or something like that). There are no Tillandsias native to New Mexico or Arizona, either, as far as I know. One would think they could find a toe hold in the southern parts of NM, AZ and CA, where it doesn't get very cold (though it can snow). It is drier down there and Las Cruces (NM) is at around 3,500 feet altitude, but NM doesn't have much in the way of humidity (except while it's raining). Maybe one day some strong Tillandsia will escape and establish itself in the wilds of the southwestern USA :)

I talked to dad last night and he clarified to me that it was actually a very large stag fern that was growing on the side of our house. I tried to use Google street view but the picture was taken long after the fern was gone.

It's cool your dad remembered that! You have more to talk about now. Also it's cool that now you know how to use Google street view, which has helped me find my way to new places here in Albuquerque (though in one case a picture was taken of an area that later had new construction, a pedestrian bridge over the freeway but at least I knew what to look for when I walked to the site). I wish Google would go inside businesses like nurseries to show us what is available and save time :)

Spanish Moss might be considered another "big" Tillandsia. I have good luck with it despite my high and dry climate.

Years ago when I visited Los Angeles I saw in a nursery a Tillandsia that was about 2' tall-or long. It was the largest Tillandsia that didn't look like a Bromeliad I had ever seen. That was in 2006 and the price tag said 75$. Now,I see that as a steal.

Spanish moss is beautiful - I recall seeing a lot of it as I got further up into Georgia on road trips.