Spanish Moss is a pendant, epiphytic perennial which absorbs nutrients and water from the air and rainfall.
It consists of a slender stem that bears alternate thin, curly, scaled, cylindrical grey/green leaves 2–6cms long and 1mm thick. They grow vegetatively in this rather chain-like fashion to create thick hanging shapes up to 6m in length.
Its early summer flowers are very small and almost inconspicuous but quite fragrant and are blue or pale green with three petals.
Tillandsia usneoides propagates either by seed or by fragments that blow on the wind and stick to tree limbs, or are carried by birds as nesting material. in fact its spread of originating locations follows the path of hurricanes up and down the length of the Americas.