plant flowering 9–10 dm high. leaves rosulate, to 8 dm long, minutely and obscurely lepidote throughout; sheath broadly elliptic, ca 15 cm long, nearly black beneath; blade ligulate, broadly acute with a stout involute terminal cusp, 7–8 cm wide, flat. inflorescence: peduncle erect, rather slender; peduncle bracts strict, imbricate, the lowest subfoliaceous, the others broadly ovate with a cuspidate apex; fertile part typically of 2 branches with long sterile laxly bracteate bases; spikes oblong, densely many-flowered, 15–17 cm long (fertile part); rachis nearly straight, subalate, 4 mm wide; floral bracts 3 times the internodes but spreading at an thesis and exposing the rachis, not secund, broadly ovate, rounded and apiculate, 25 mm long, very broadly convex and ecarinate, coriaceous, even, glabrous, green (! foster). flowers slightly secund at anthesis; pedicel slenderly obconic, to 10 mm long in fruit; sepals broadly elliptic, 17 mm long, ecarinate, coriaceous, even; petals oblong, exceeding the stamens, white, musky and opening at night (! foster). fruits cylindric, acute, beaked, 3 cm long.Edited from : Smith & Downs 1977. Tillandsioideae (Bromeliaceae). in Flora Neotropica.