plant stemless or very short-caulescent, flowering about 45 cm high. leaves 20–30 in a dense rosette, all or nearly all erect, 2–4 dm long; sheath elongate, scarcely distinct, covered with a ferruginous membrane of appressed scales; blade long-attenuate, 5 mm wide or less, sparsely and minutely lepidote beneath, subchartaceous when dry. inflorescence: peduncle erect, much shorter than the leaves, very slender; peduncle bracts tubular-involute, erect, the lower imbricate, the upper elliptic, obtuse, 15 mm long, equaling the internodes, purple; fertile part simple, lax, linear, 12 cm long, 25 mm wide, to 30-flowered; rachis completely exposed, glabrous, regularly undulate especially toward apex, not at all thickened at the bases of the flowers, internodes ca 6 mm long; floral bracts spreading, linear-elliptic, obtuse, ca 13 mm long, 3.5–4 mm wide, equaling the sepals, scarcely carinate, glabrous outside, strongly nerved, chartaceous. flowers sessile; sepals equally subfree, elliptic, obtuse, 7–14 mm long, coriaceous, glabrous, strongly nerved, the adaxial carinate; petals white, the blades spreading, 6 mm long. stamens deeply included, exceeding the pistil, filaments high-connate. fruits slenderly cylindric, acute, to 36 mm lortg.Edited from : Smith & Downs 1977. Tillandsioideae (Bromeliaceae). in Flora Neotropica.