Plant in full coastal sun to light shade in a well-drained soil and irrigate regularly to occasionally. Has proven hardy in gardens experiencing short duration temperatures down to the high 20's F, but ultimate hardiness in not known by us. This is an attractive grassy looking landscape plant but perhaps the most unique aspect of this plant is that it is one of the few Hechtia species that is not wickedly dangerous with sharp teeth along the leaf margins and in fact this species can easily be worked with and even stroked - we have come to call it the only friendly Hechtia!

Hechtia tillandsioides has very confusing origins. It was first described as Bakeria tillandsioides by Eduuard Francois Andre in 1889 to honor the British botanist John Gilbert Baker with a possible reference of it coming from Brazil or Columbia. This name for the genus however had previously been used to describe unrelated plants in both the aralia (Araliaceae) and rose (Rosaceae) families, which prompted Smithsonian botanist Lyman Smith to rename it Bakerantha tillandsioides in 1934, but later in 1951 he combined it with Hechtia as Hechtia tillandsioides in Contributions from the United States National Herbarium 29(10). Early on the species was listed as probably native to mountainous areas in southeastern parts of Mexico but it is now thought to occupy steep vertical walls along rivers from 2,500 to 2,800 feet in tropical dry forests in the Sierra Madre Oriental biogeographical region, near the border with Vera Cruz in the Mexican states of Hidalgo, Puebla, and Querétaro. In 2018 this plant was proposed to be transferred back into the genus Bakerantha in an article in Harvard Papers in Botany (23(2): 301-312) titled "The reestablishment of Bakerantha and a new genus in Hechtioideae (Bromeliaceae) in Megamexico, Mesoamerantha by Ramirez-Morillo, Romero-Soler, Carnevali, Pinzon, Raigoza et al, noting that "monophyly of this clade is also well supported by molecular features, along with a fairly circumscribed biogeographical distribution."

There are also several other very similar species in what was once called the Hechtia tillandsioides complex, including Hechtia (now Bakerantha) caerulea that has in the past been included with Hechtia tillandsioides. We purchased our stock plants of this variety at Bill Baker's California Gardens Nursery in 2018, nine years after this amazing plant explorer and nurseryman had passed away at a much too early age. There are so many questions we wished we could still ask Bill, and one would have been where he got this plant. We have another form of Hechtia tillandsioides that came to us from University of California Riverside horticulturist Don Merhaut has grayer foliage and is a bit shyer to flower – we list this plant as Hechtia tillandsioides. We continue to list both of these plants as Hechtia tillandsioides since this is the name we received it as and until such time that the newer name Bakerantha changes get more widely recognized. 

The information about Hechtia tillandsioides 'Bill Baker' that is displayed on this web page is based on research conducted in our nursery's horticultural library and from reliable online resources. We will also include observations made about this plant as it grows in our nursery gardens and other gardens that we have visited, as well how the crops have performed in containers in our nursery field. We also incorporate comments that we receive from others and welcome hearing from anyone with additional information, particularly if they share cultural information that aids others growing this plant.

Please note that after 46 years in business, San Marcos Growers will be discontinuing nursery operations by the end of 2025 and the property will be developed for affordable housing.