leaves many in a densely funnelform rosette, to 1 m long; sheath large but obscure and scarcely wider than the blades, entire, covered on both sides with a membrane of minute pale fused scales; blade ligulate, attenuate to a dark stout spine, to 13 cm wide, subdensely serrate with antrorse curved spines 3 mm long, densely but obscurely punctulate-lepidote above, covered with a white membrane beneath. inflorescence: peduncle erect, very short, stout; peduncle bracts large, erect, very densely imbricate, broadly ovate, subulate-acuminate to a dark stout spine, densely serrate with coarse spreading teeth, dark castaneous when dry, very densely white-lepidote beneath; fertile part simple, very densely many-flowered, depressed-globose, 11 cm long, 14 cm in diameter , bearing a large apical coma which however does not exceed the other bracts; floral bracts like the peduncle-bracts but smaller and recurved toward apex, exceeding the sepals, bright red in life. flowers sessile, strongly compressed; sepals asymmetric, ovate, short mucronate, 18 mm long, connate for 3 mm, coriaceous, dark castaneous when dry, densely white-lepidote, the 2 adaxial strongly carinate; petals white. pistil: ovary subcylindric, 2 cm long in fruit, epigynous tube cupuliform, 6 mm ong; placentae central; ovules caudate.Edited from : Smith & Downs 1979. Bromelioideae (Bromeliaceae) in Flora Neotropica.