plant flowering at least 75 cm high. leaves about 1 m long; sheath elliptic-ovate, large, densely lepidote with very minute immersed brown scales, brown; blade rounded with a broad apiculate summit, 7–10 cm wide, densely pale-appressed-lepidote throughout but especially below, armed with dark spines 3 mm long but decreasing in size toward the leaf-apex. inflorescence: peduncle erect, elongate but much shorter than the leaves, 4–5 mm in diameter, sulcate, soon glabrous; peduncle bracts ovate, acute, chartaceous, the upper imbricate or shorter than the internodes; fertile part once-branched with 20–30 spikes; primary bracts very narrowly triangular, shorter or longer than the stipes, entire; spikes all distinctly stipitate, broadly ellipsoid, 2 cm long, the lower about the length of their stipes, the upper distinctly longer, densely tomentose with smoky ferruginous scales; floral bracts erect, broadly ovate, obtuse, short-mucronate, 11 mm long, exceeded by the sepals, 12 mm wide, broadly convex, striate toward the apex. flowers strongly compressed; sepals strongly asymmetric, emarginate, mucronate, 5 mm long, even, rigid, free; petals lance-linear, acute, 8 mm long, each bearing 2 thick scales extending for most of their length and with a very narrow free margin; ovules obtuse.Edited from : Smith & Downs 1979. Bromelioideae (Bromeliaceae) in Flora Neotropica.