plant stemless, flowering nearly 6 dm high. leaves rosulate, 30 cm long, densely punctulate-lepidote; sheath ovate, brown; blade 20 mm wide, narrowly triangular, long-attenuate. inflorescence: peduncle erect, slender; peduncle bracts narrowly elliptic, apiculate, densely imbricate; fertile part 30 cm long, laxly twice-branched, branches ascending, to 12 cm in diameter, nearly glabrous; primary bracts narrowly lanceolate, 5–6 mm long, spreading, much shorter than the axillary branches; spikes sometimes ascending, sometimes recurved, narrowly linear, 5 cm long, 5 mm wide, laxly 14-flowered; rachis sinuous, slender, scantly lepidote; floral bracts erect, ovate, acute, 5–7 mm long, equaling the flowers, much exceeding the internodes, lepidote, sulcate, keeled toward apex, incurved. flowers minute, erect; sepals narrowly obovate, lepidote, asymmetric , ca 4 mm long; petals slightly longer than the sepals, acute, yellow, punctulate. stamens deeply included, exceeding the style; anther ovoid, mucronulate. fruits slenderly cylindric, 2 cm long.Edited from : Smith & Downs 1977. (protologue) Tillandsioideae (Bromeliaceae). in Flora Neotropica.