plant flowering 16 dm or higher. leaves to 9 dm long, rigid; sheath broadly elliptic, 2 dm long, covered with minute appressed brown scales, sometimes tinged with purple toward apex; blade broadly acute and then attenuate into a long subulate apex, to 10 cm wide at base, green nearly glabrous above, minutely cinereous-lepidote beneath, laxly serrate with curved brown spines 4 mm long. inflorescence: peduncle erect, about 1 cm in diameter at base, sparsely flocculose or glabrous; peduncle bracts subfoliaceous, erect, the upper exceeding the internodes; fertile part much-branched, broadly corymbose, 25–40 cm in diameter, subglabrous or glabrous; primary bracts narrowly lanceolate, much shorter than the branches, the other bracts gradually smaller; ultimate branches few flowered, geniculate, very slender; floral bracts ovate, long-mucronate, to 8 mm long. flowers: pedicel to 12 mm long, slender; sepals narrowly obovate, slenderly mucronulate, 15 mm long, very short-connate; petals linear, 20–35 mm long, bearing 2 scales at base. pistil: ovary obconic, 7–8 mm long.Edited from : Smith & Downs 1979. Bromelioideae (Bromeliaceae) in Flora Neotropica.