plant 0,2–0,3 m high. leaves forming a dense subbulbose rosette, up to 0,3 m long, to 6 mm wide, long acute, both sides with numerous minute lepidote upper side green, conspicuously strongly undulate-plicate. inflorescence: peduncle short, 80–100 mm long, slender tenuous, bracts longer than the internodes, ending in an acumen densely involute; fertile part shorter than the leaves, a once-branched panicle with 2–5 spikes, totally brown lepidote; spikes close, flabellate, 10–20-flowered, 16–18 mm wide, suberect-spreading, short stipitate; floral bracts densely imbricate, almost orbicular, to 10 mm diam., concave, slightly carinate towards the tip, clearly longer than the sepals. flowers spreading, secund; sepals free, very clearly asymmetric, wide elliptic, inflated, longitudinally veined, 5 mm long; petals white, 5 mm long, exceeding the sepals, elliptic, conglutinated contiuously to the middle, exceeding the stamens.Translated by Butcher from: Mez 1935. (protologue) Bromeliaceae (part 1-4) in Engler, A. (ed) Das Pflanzenreich.