Bromeliads enter recorded history with Columbus's account of Carib Indians cultivating Ananas comosus (pineapple) on the island of Guadeloupe. Within the next hundred years, commercial production began at numerous Old World sites, and by the mid-19th century major European botanical gardens were displaying numerous ornamental Bromeliaceae. Ready access in culture and often novel adaptations for life free of contact with earth soil in turn guaranteed the attentions of early phytogeographers and morphologists. Interest has continued to grow until today more is known about the ecophysiology of the bromeliads than about the members of almost any other family of tropical plants.

Major advances in systematics, natural history theory and functional biology over the last two decades have heightened opportunity to reconstruct adaptive radiations and impute the conditions of ancestors and their habitats. Evolutionary relationships inferred from the structure of DNA provide the robust phylogeny necessary to order and date the origins of those aspects of phenotype responsible for current adaptive variety and importance in ecosystems. Molecular, combined with traditional taxonomic, data have already expanded insights on the histories of clades as diverse as the Hawaiian silver swords and stickleback fishes. However, none of the inquiries on plants has considered more than a few of the many traits that shape botanical radiations by dictating growth requirements, mobility, relationships with other biota and ecological tolerances.