Tillandsia genus (air plants)  is native to the southern United States and south through the Caribbean Islands and Mexico through much of South America.  This is a large genus with about 350-400 species of perennial herbs.  There are 18 species, two hybrids, and four subspecies growing in greater North America, including Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.  The leaves are usually covered with gray scales.

Pineapple Family (Bromeliaceae) is found mainly in the New World tropics and subtropics. This family contains over 2,100 species arranged in over 45 different genera. There are 43 species in 12 different genera now growing in greater North America, including the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. This large family includes several species of considerable economic importance. The pineapple is grown extensively in places like Hawaii as a food. Many ornamentals are grown in the genera Aechmea, Tillandsia, and Vriesea.

Farinosa Order is a collection of many different small families of such diverse nature that sufficient arguments exist to treat some of them as full orders.

Monocots are a large group of plants usually characterized by having leaves with parallel veins and a seed with a single shell. Most flowers are created with multiples of three. In  the older botany texts, the Monocots were considered more primitive than the Dicots. However, many recent authors have placed the Monocots as an offshoot of the primitive Dicots. Here they are placed before the Dicots.

Seed plants (Phylum Embryophyta) are generally grouped into one large phylum containing three major classes: the Gymnosperms, the Monocots, and the Dicots. (Some scientists separate the Gymnosperms into a separate phylum and refer to the remaining plants as flowering plants or Angiospermae.)

For North American counts of the number of species in each genus and family, the primary reference has been John T. Kartesz, author of A Synonymized Checklist of the Vascular Flora of the United States, Canada, and Greenland (1994). The geographical scope of his lists include, as part of greater North America, Hawaii, Alaska, Greenland, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.

Kartesz lists 21,757 species of vascular plants comprising the ferns, gymnosperms and flowering plants as being found in greater North America (including Alaska, Hawaii, Greenland, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands).

There are estimates within the scientific world that about half of the listed North American seed plants were originally native with the balance being comprised of Eurasian and tropical plants that have become established.

Plant kingdom contains a large variety of different organisms including mosses, ferns, and seed plants. Most plants manufacture their energy from sunlight and water. Identification of many species is difficult in that most individual plants have characteristics that have variables based on soil moisture, soil chemistry, and sunlight.

Because of the difficulty in learning and identifying different plant groups, specialists have emerged that study only a limited group of plants. These specialists revise the taxonomy and give us detailed descriptions and ranges of the various species.  Their results are published in technical journals and written with highly specialized words that apply to a specific group.

On the other hand, there are the nature publishers. These people and companies undertake the challenging task of trying to provide easy to use pictures and descriptions to identify those species.