plant flowering 4 dm high. leaves ca 4 dm long, covered with fine pale appressed scales; sheath elliptic, 8 cm long, castaneous; blade ligulate, acute, 35 mm wide, flat, becoming more or less glabrous above. inflorescence: peduncle erect, slender, glabrous; peduncle bracts erect, much exceeding the internodes but not wholly covering the peduncle, broadly ovate, acuminate; fertile part laxly once-branched, 16 cm long; primary bracts like the peduncle-bracts, barely exceeding the short bracteate sterile bases of the branches; spikes divergent, linear-lanceolate, acute, to 10 cm long, 2 cm wide, strongly complanate, densely manyflowered or sublax at base; floral bracts ovate, acute, to 23 mm long, slightly exceeding the sepals, carinate and strongly incurved at apex, thin, nerved when dry, glabrous, pink (! moore). flowers subsessile; sepals equally very short-connate, lance-oblong, acute, 21 mm long, the adaxial carinate; petals blue, the blades spreading, broadly elliptic, 9 mm long. stamens deeply included, exceeding the pistil.Edited from : Smith & Downs 1977. Tillandsioideae (Bromeliaceae). in Flora Neotropica.