The northern limit of its natural range is Northampton County, Virginia, with colonial-era reports of it in southern Maryland, where no populations are now known to exist. In North America, it occurs in a broad band following the Gulf of Mexico and the southern Atlantic coast. Virgin Islands) through Argentina, where the climate is warm enough and a relatively high average humidity occurs.

Spanish moss' primary range is in the southeastern United States (including Puerto Rico and the U.S.

The specific name of the plant, usneoides, means 'resembling Usnea', a lichen. Formerly, it was placed in the genera Anoplophytum, Caraguata, and Renealmia. Spanish moss is in the family Bromeliaceae (the bromeliads). Spanish moss propagates both by seed and vegetatively by fragments that are carried on the wind and stick to tree limbs or that are carried to other locations by birds as nesting material. The scape is partly hidden within the leaf sheath. Its flowers are yellow-green and small, with spreading petals. Spanish moss consists of one or more slender stems, bearing alternate thin, curved or curly, and heavily scaled leaves 2–6 cm (0.8–2.4 inches) long and 1 mm (0.04 inches) broad, that grow vegetatively in a chain-like fashion (pendant), forming hanging structures of up to 6 m (20 feet). While it superficially resembles its namesake, it is neither a lichen such as Usnea nor a moss, and it is not native to Spain. Most known in the United States, it commonly is found on the southern live oak ( Quercus virginiana) and bald cypress ( Taxodium distichum) in the lowlands, swamps, and marshes of the mid-Atlantic and southeastern states, from the coast of southeastern Virginia to Florida and west to southern Arkansas and Texas. It is known as 'grandpa's beard' in French Polynesia. It has been naturalized in Queensland ( Australia). It is native to much of Mexico, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Central America, South America, the Southern United States, and West Indies. Spanish moss ( Tillandsia usneoides) is an epiphytic flowering plant that often grows upon large trees in tropical and subtropical climates.

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