plant flowering about 1 m high, red except the leaves. leaves to 9 dm long, very narrowly triangular, 3 cm wide, completely covered with appressed ferruginous or cinereous scales, coarsely and laxly serrate with teeth 6 mm long, but the long-attenuate apex unarmed. inflorescence: peduncle elongate, slender, about 7 mm in diameter, glabrous; peduncle bracts small extremely remote, ovate, acuminate, chartaceous; fertile part very laxly once-branched, 4–5 dm long and 15–30 cm in diameter, glabrous; primary bracts like the pedunclebracts, about half as long as the sterile bases of the branches; branches slender, laxly flowered; floral bracts ovate, acute, equaling or exceeding the pedicels, membranaceous. flowers: pedicel to 3 mm long; sepals chartaceous, the staminate narrowly ovate, obtuse, erose, 5 mm long, the pistillate broadly triangular-ovate, acute, 4 mm long; staminate petals elliptic, obtuse, 7.5 mm long, the pistillate lance-ovate, acute, 8–10 mm long. stamens included; anther ovate, apiculate. pistil: ovary glabrous; style very short. fruits to 2 cm long; carpels 5 mm in diameter, even, dark brown, soon separating; seeds narrow, 5 mm long exclusive of the long caudate appendage.Edited from : Smith & Downs 1974. Pitcairnioideae (Bromeliaceae) in Flora Neotropica.