plant stemless, over 8 dm high. leaves rosulate; blade linear, attenuate, 22 cm long, 8 mm wide, very laxly serrate with minute ascending spines, covered on both sides with white appressed scales, roseate for 2 cm at base. inflorescence nearly 8 dm long, amply and laxly twice-branched, glabrous, red-brown when dry; primary bracts narrowly triangular, 16 mm long, much shorter than the naked flattened sterile bases of the branches, entire, nerved; branches spreading to 25 cm long, their axes straight and very slender; racemes to 9 cm long including the short sterile base, subdensely many-flowered; floral bracts broadly ovate, acuminate, 2 mm long, thin. flowers obscurely pedicellate, spreading; sepals subtriangular, obtuse, 2 mm long, ecarinate; petals 3.5 mm long, white. pistil: ovary superior, ovules naked.Edited from : Smith & Downs 1974. Pitcairnioideae (Bromeliaceae) in Flora Neotropica.