plant stemless, flowering 4–7 dm high. leaves rosulate, suberect, 25 cm long, covered with subappressed cinereous scales; sheath narrowly ovate, scarcely distinct; blade very narrowly triangular, 1–2 cm wide. inflorescence: peduncle erect, slender, glabrous; peduncle bracts imbricate, elliptic, red, lepidote, the lower slenderly laminate; fertile part once-branched or subtwice-branched, dense toward apex, lax below, 17–25 cm long, 5–10 cm in diameter; axis nearly straight, slender, glabrous; primary bracts like the upper peduncle-bracts, much shorter than the simple or digitately divided branches; spikes erect or suberect, stipitate with imbricate sterile bracts, linear-lanceolate, acuminate, 55–65 mm long, 8–13 mm wide, complanate, subdensely 8–12-flowered; rachis flexuous, slender, sulcate, subalate; floral bracts erect and laxly imbricate but exposing much of the rachis, ovate- elliptic, obtuse, 16 mm long, equaling the sepals, ecarinate, thin, strongly nerved, glabrous. flowers subsessile; sepals lanceolate, obtuse, 14 mm long, nerved, glabrous, the adaxial carinate and connate 3–4 mm; petals 20 mm long, red to violet, spreading at apex, the blades narrow. stamens and pistil included.Edited from : Smith & Downs 1977. Tillandsioideae (Bromeliaceae). in Flora Neotropica.