In March 2008 I was pondering why we did not have a photo on fcbs.org of B. magnifica and realised that my indecision was based on problems I had encountered in 2002 regarding B. magnifica var acutisepala. I could not see how the photos in J Brom Soc 39(3): 119. 1989 or J. Brom Soc 41(3): 97. 1991 could be B. magnifica because the sepals were blunt ended and appeared to be emarginate (a nick in the end).
This time I shared my doubts with Harry Luther and here are his thoughts
"Nearly all the material in USA of B. magnifica is B. alfonsi-joannis, probably all Foster 834. I've seen only 1 cultivated plant that is probably B. magnifica from California in 1987. I wish I'd asked for a piece. B. magnifica seems to have leaves 3-5 cm wide, banded and mostly blue petals, probably only from Paraguay."
This comment made me check the description in Mez 1935 and found that the description had been varied in Smith & Downs to accommodate in all probability Foster 834.
In 1904 Mez described a smaller plant with narrower leaves and blue petals from north Paraguay which was followed up by Hassler in 1911 describing the var. acutisepala - a slightly larger plant.
In 1952 Reitz published Billbergia alfonsi-joannis from Santa Catarina which is north of Paraguay. In 1952 Lyman Smith worked on Foster 834 from Espirito Santo and may not have been aware of Reitz's publication at the time but treated it as a large form of B. magnifica. Note here that Santa Catarina is between Paraguay and Espirito Santo!
Was Lyman Smith in error? I will leave that up to the taxonomists to decide and write about. We have no photos of a 'true' Billbergia magnifica but are still searching. We are treating Foster 834 as B. alfonsi-joannis. This clone seems to persist in many Floridian collections."