plant erect; roots stout, many originating on the stem and descending beneath the cortex to the ground; stem simple or branched, 1–5 dm high, 15 mm in diameter including the densely imbricate old leaf-sheaths with which it is covered. leaves polystichous the whole length of the stem but only the terminal ones complete; sheath suborbicular, 25 mm long, smooth, pale, sparsely punctulate-lepidote; blade deciduous along a regular transverse line, very narrowly triangular with an abruptly acute pungent apex 3–5 cm long, 5–8 mm wide, entire, uniformly many-nerved, faintly sulcate beneath, glabrous. inflorescence: peduncle none; fertile part central, sessile, capitate, ca 25-flowered; floral bracts lanceolate, acuminate, 2–3 cm long, equaling or exceeding the flowers, entire, membranaceous, nerved, sparsely appressed-lepidote. flowers sessile or subsessile; sepals lanceolate, acute, 8–10 mm long, scarious with brown nerves; petals (elliptic, broad rounded) very similar to the sepals. stamens deeply included, the two series very unequal. pistil: ovary obconic, 5–10 mm long, crowned with a cylindric epigynous tube 10 mm long. fruits subglobose, scarcely elongated from the ovary.Edited from : Smith & Downs 1974. Pitcairnioideae (Bromeliaceae) in Flora Neotropica.