plant flowering ca 1 m high. leaves about equaling the inflorescence, green, densely and finely brown-lepidote; sheath elliptic, 2 dm long; blade ligulate, rounded, retuse-cuspidate, 4 cm wide, laxly serrate with slender, curved and antrorse spines 2 mm long. inflorescence: peduncle erect, ca 1 cm in diameter, lepidote; peduncle bracts imbricate and closely enfolding the peduncle or the lowest lax, ovate, subacute and apiculate, dense-ly appressed-lepidote; fertile part clavate, once-branched, 15 cm long, 4 cm in diameter; primary bracts imbricate, suborbicular, to 45 mm long, nearly covering the sepals, densely appressed-lepidote, entire; branches fasciculately few-flowered; floral bracts broadly elliptic, much exceeding the ovary, subchartaceous, densely lepidote. flowers obscurely pedicellate; sepals strongly asymmetric with a broad semiorbicular wing, short-mucronate, 23 mm long, connate for l–2 mm, glabrous; petals incompletely known, the blades elliptic, 8 mm long, white. stamens included; pollen grains 5–7 porate (! h; robinson). pistil: ovary slenderly subcylindric, blending with the pedicel, epigynous tube 3 mm long.Edited from : Smith & Downs 1979. Bromelioideae (Bromeliaceae) in Flora Neotropica.