plant acaulescent, including inflorescence ca 1 m long, with a spreading or funnelform, ca 50 cm tall rosette of about 20, somewhat lustrous ¬green and reddish leaves. leaves ca 65 cm long, exceeding the peduncle; sheath ample, tapering or contracted into the blade, subcoriaceous, elliptic, broadly convex, 16–20 cm long, ca 15 cm wide, with mem¬branaceous margins, very densely brown-appressed-lepidote, fer¬rugineous to castaneous below (outside); blade arching, thin¬coriaceous, ligulate, broadly convex, ca 45 x 9 cm, broadly rounded and triangular-acuminate, recurving at the apex, subdensely appressed¬-lepidote and tinged with red below, soon becoming inconspicuously lepidote above. inflorescence subdigitately compound of about 7 suberect spikes, red; peduncle erect, short, ca 1 cm in diam., glabrous, con¬cealed by the leaves; peduncle bracts imbricate, chartaceous, (broadly) ovate, with a small green triangular blade, about twice as long as the internodes (?), appressed-lepidote, red; axis wholly covered by bracts, straight or nearly so, glabrous; primary bracts as the upper peduncle bracts, but more apiculate, suberect, imbricate, much shorter than the peduncle, wholly red; peduncle* suberect or slightly spreading, 15–20 cm long, glabrous, entirely covered by bracts; peduncle bracts* as the floral bracts, but polystichously arranged, densely imbricate, more than twice as long as the internodes; spikes linear, slightly if at all complanate, 28–40 cm long, ca 1.2 cm in diam., attenuately acute, distichously 10–16-flowered, a few sterile bracts at the apex; rachis covered at an¬thesis, slightly flexuous, alate-angled (when dry), glabrous; floral bracts erect, densely imbricate, chartaceous, with veined surface (when dry), ovate-lanceolate, 5.3–6 cm long, acutish or obscurely cucullate, more than twice as long as the internodes, much exceeding the sepals, finely carinate toward the apex, appressed-lepidote, red. flowers contiguous, (sub-) sessile; receptacle obconic, ca 5 mm long, alate; sepals thin ¬coriaceous, with veined surface (when dry), linear-lanceolate, ca 3.6 cm long, obtuse and slightly incurved at the apex, adaxial ones carinate, sparsely floccose, green; petals erect, linear (-ligulate) broadest near the apex, deep pink, bearing two highly adnate ligules at the base; ligules linear, free lobe dentate. stamens all alike, just exceeded by the petals and pistil, filaments slender, straight, flat, except near the apex, anthers dor¬sifixed (at l/3), ca 6 mm long. pistil: ovary slenderly ovoid, ca 7 mm long, tapering into the slender style. fruits and coma not known.Edited from : Gouda 1987. Bromeliaceae (subfamily Tillandsioideae) in Görts-van Rijn, A.R.A. (ed.) Flora of the Guiana\'s Series A: Phanerogams.