plant flowering to 20 cm; high, strong growing. leaves forming an inflated rosette, a few outside leaves turn a shiny red at anthesis, decurved, to 20 cm; long, 20 mm; wide above the sheath, then narrowing to a tip, glabrous to the very small lepidote. inflorescence: peduncle very short, however producing flowers above the leaf rosette, hidden by the very dense leaf rosette; fertile part almost many flowered, cup shaped like a corymb; very dense; primary bracts all leaf like, flaming red, concealing all the spikes; spikes to 25mm; long, 1 - 3 flowered, clearly distichous, fan shaped, sessile; floral bracts smooth, glabrous, almost membraneous or almost leathery, ovate elliptic, barely keeled, broad acute, shorter than the sepals. flowers strictly erect, emerging from the primary bracts, to 70mm; long; sepals adaxial pair joined higher than the front one, elliptic, acute, sub- membraneous, glabrous, minutely veined, to 17mm; long; petals strict, erect tube, deep violet, much longer than the stamens.Translated by Derek Butcher from: Mez 1935. (protologue) Bromeliaceae (part 1-4) in Engler, A. (ed) Das Pflanzenreich.