plant stemless, flowering 35 cm high. leaves bulbous-rosulate, covered with minute subappressed cinereous scales; sheath ovate, to 10 cm long, tightly clasping the peduncle and forming a narrowly ovoid bulb; blade strongly reflexed, very narrowly triangular , filiform-attenuate, to 55 cm long, 15 mm wide, involute toward apex. inflorescence: peduncle erect, soon glabrlus, sulcate when dry; peduncle-bracts densely imbricate and concealing the peduncle, subfoliaceous with small elliptic sheaths and elongate reflexed blades, very densely lepidote; fertile part once-branched, 12 cm long, subdigitate; primary bracts incompletely known but their sheaths shorter than the spikes, very densely lepidote; spikes divergent, oblong-lanceolate, 3–8 cm long, 15 mm wide, to 16-flowered, strongly complanate; rachis flexuous, winged, sparsely and obscurely punctulate-lepidote; floral bracts densely imbricate but narrow and more or less exposing the rachis, ovate, acute, to 18 mm long, much exceeding the sepals, sharply carinate, subcoriaceous, glabrous, lustrous. flowers subsessile; sepals equally subfree, oblong-lanceolate, broadly acute, 12 mm long, glabrous, nerved; petals blue-purple, the blades divergent, nearly 2 cm long, exceeding the stamens.Edited from : Smith & Downs 1977. Tillandsioideae (Bromeliaceae). in Flora Neotropica.