[5] The family includes both epiphytes, such as Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides), and terrestrial species, such as the pineapple (Ananas comosus).

However, the family is diverse enough to include the tank bromeliads, grey-leaved epiphyte Tillandsia species that gather water only from leaf structures called trichomes, and many desert-dwelling succulents.

These rosettes, called "tanks", can hold as much as ten liters (eighteen pints) of water, and be little biotic communities unto themselves.

One individual tank was found to contain the following: four harvestmen, a spider, three species of wood lice, a centipede, a "jumping millipede"[sic], a pseudoscorpion, "various metallic beetles", earwigs, a tree seedling, Chironomia fly larva, an ant colony, an earthworm, numerous mites, and a small frog.

Trichomes, in the form of scales or hairs, allow bromeliads to capture water in cloud forests and help to reflect sunlight in desert environments.

This adaptation allows bromeliads in hot or dry climates to open their stomata at night rather than during the day, which reduces water loss.

[12] Both CAM and epiphytism have evolved multiple times within the family, with some taxa reverting to C3 photosynthesis as they radiated into less arid climates.

The long period between the origin and diversification of bromeliads, during which no extant species evolved, suggests that there was much speciation and extinction during that time, which would explain the genetic distance of the Bromeliaceae from other families within the Poales.

[16] The West African species Pitcairnia feliciana is the only bromeliad not endemic to the Americas, and is thought to have reached Africa via long-distance dispersal about 12 million years ago.

The uplift greatly altered the region's geological and climatic conditions, creating a new mountainous environment for the epiphytic tillandsioids to colonize.

[17][13][18][19] Around 5.5 million years ago, a clade of epiphytic bromelioids arose in Serra do Mar, a lush mountainous region on the coast of Southeastern Brazil.

[13] These epiphytes thrived in this humid environment, since their trichomes rely on water in the air rather than from the ground like terrestrial plants.

[22] Brocchinioideae is defined as the most basal branch of Bromeliaceae based on both morphological and molecular evidence, namely genes in chloroplast DNA.

[13] Hechtioideae is also defined based on analyses of chloroplast DNA; similar morphological adaptations to arid environments also found in other groups (namely the genus Puya) are attributed to convergent evolution.

[35][36][37] A study of 209 plants from the Yasuní Scientific Reserve in Ecuador identified 11,219 animals, representing more than 350 distinct species,[38] many of which are found only on bromeliads.

Many exotic varieties were produced until World War I, which halted breeding programs and led to the loss of some species.

[41] Édouard André was a French collector/explorer whose many discoveries of bromeliads in the Cordilleras of South America would be influential on horticulturists to follow.

Foster and Lyman Smith of the United States and Werner Rauh of Germany and Michelle Jenkins of Australia.