; 0 only the pistillate plant known, about 2 m high. leaves nearly 1 m long; sheath suborbicular, glabrous, shiny, castaneous; blade narrowly triangular, pungent, glabrous and lustrous above, white-lepidote beneath, often repand, the teeth stout, straight or uncinate, up to 1 cm long, brown, 2–4 cm apart. inflorescence: peduncle about 15 mm in diameter, glabrous with age; peduncle bracts triangular, acuminate, subchartaceous, densely and minutely white-lepidote, the upper ones much shorter than the internodes inflorescence large, laxly once-branched, slenderly pyramidal; primary bracts like the peduncle-bracts, up to 15 mm long; racemes spreading, subdense, often interrupted, up to 15 cm long, the lower ones stipitate; floral bracts broadly ovate, acute, about half equaling the sepals, brown, hyaline-margined, nerved, densely pale-lepidote. flowers subsessile, 8 mm long, spreading; sepals very broadly ovate, obtuse, mucronate, 3.5 mm long, brown, nerved, lepidote; petals ovate, 6 mm long, white. fruits ovoid, acute, 1 cm long; carpels dark-castaneous, even, sublustrous, sparsely lepidote; seeds long-caudate.Edited from : Smith & Downs 1974. Pitcairnioideae (Bromeliaceae) in Flora Neotropica.