plant flowering 5–6 dm high. leaves many, rosulate, 3–4 dm long, strongly nerved and with age fraying into long dark persistent fibers, brown-appressed-lepidote throughout, broadly scarious-margined; sheath ovate, scarcely distinct; blade narrowly triangular, attenuate, ca 15 mm wide. inflorescence: peduncle erect, 5 mm in diameter, glabrous; peduncle bracts erect, elliptic, the lowest very narrowly laminate, the highest shorter than the internodes; fertile part laxly 6–7-flowered, glabrous; rachis slender, flexuous; floral bracts becoming secund with the flowers, broadly ovate, obtuse and apiculate, about half as long as the sepals, ecarinate, thin, nerved. flowers: pedicel 7 mm long. flowers erect before anthesis then secund-spreading; sepals narrowly elliptic, obtuse, 25 mm long, ecarinate, chartaceous when dry, nerved; petals exceeding the stamens, bearing 2 acute scales at base,.the blades elliptic, obtuse, 10 mm long, reddish outside greenish-white inside.Edited from : Smith & Downs 1977. Tillandsioideae (Bromeliaceae). in Flora Neotropica.