plant flowering 12–13 dm high. leaves to 7 dm long, covered throughout with small pale appressed inconspicuous scales; sheath broadly elliptic, distinctly wider than the blades, brown-tinged; blade ligulate, broadly rounded and apiculate, 7–11 cm wide, laxly but regularly serrulate. inflorescence: peduncle slender, white-flocculose, becoming glabrous with age; peduncle bracts erect, lanceolate, barely exceeding the internodes; fertile part laxly once-branched with the upper spikes short-stipitate, 43–47 cm long, glabrous; primary bracts linear, acuminate, shorter than the lowest branches but about equaling their sterile bases; stipe slender, flattened, to 7 cm long; spikes ellipsoid to subglobose, 15–25 mm long; floral bracts broadly ovate, acuminate to a small slender mucro, 5 mm long, much exceeded by the sepals, thin, nerved, stramineous when dry. flowers: sepals strongly asymmetric with a produced lateral wing equaling or exceeding the terminal mucro, 5 mm long, short-connate; petals white, bearing 2 highly adnate infundibuliform appendages.Edited from : Smith & Downs 1979. Bromelioideae (Bromeliaceae) in Flora Neotropica.