plant flowering over 1 m high. leaves rosulate, to 63 cm long; sheath elliptic, 15 cm long, covered throughout with appressed brown-centered scales; blade narrowly subtriangular, long-attenuate, 4 cm wide at base, densely and finely appressed-lepidote beneath, glabrous above. inflorescence: peduncle erect, 2 cm in diameter, glabrous, red; peduncle bracts erect, densely imbricate, the lower foliaceous, the upper long-attenuate from an ovate base; fertile part once-branched, sub cylindric, ca 8 cm in diameter; primary bracts like the upper peduncle-bracts, suberect, their blades exceeding the lower branches; racemes divergent or arching from a long erect naked sterile base, to 8 cm long in all, few-flowered; rachis slender, geniculate, quadrangular, glabrous; floral bracts more or less downwardly secund with the flowers, ovate, acute, 2 cm long, about 4 times as long as the internodes, much exceeded by the sepals, carinate, subchartaceous and nerved when dry, glabrous. flowers in part downwardly secund, yellow; pedicel rather slender, 7 mm long; sepals elliptic, obtuse, 25 mm long, ecarinate, nerved; petals evidently more than twice as long as the sepals and soon flaccid and drooping. pistil to 6 cm long.Edited from : Smith & Downs 1977. Tillandsioideae (Bromeliaceae). in Flora Neotropica.