plant flowering over 1.5 m high. leaves rosulate, 5 dm long, sparsely and minutely brown-lepidote; sheath elliptic, large; blade ligulate, broadly rounded and apiculate, 7 cm wide, green, concolorous. inflorescence: peduncle erect, stout; peduncle bracts erect, densely imbricate, the lowest foliaceous, the highest broadly elliptic, castaneous when dry, the acute apex apparently green; fertile part lax, amply twice-branched, nearly 6 dm long, wholly red except for the petals, castaneous when dry; primary bracts broadly ovate, acute, to 6 cm long, slightly exceeding the naked flattened bases of the branches, obscurely punctulate-lepidote; branches spreading, to 17 cm long, subdense; spikes and flowers more or less deflexed secund, spikes few-flowered; rachis slender, slightly geniculate; floral bracts broadly elliptic, obtuse, cucullate, ecarinate, about equaling the sepals, subchartaceous when dry, nerved, wholly exposing the rachis. flowers suberect; pedicel stout, 4 mm long; sepals elliptic, obtuse, 21 mm long, connate for 5 mm, like the bracts; petals pale olivaceous, high-conglutinate, bearing 2 dentate scales, the blades elliptic, 2 cm long, exceeding the stamens.Edited from : Smith & Downs 1977. (protologue) Tillandsioideae (Bromeliaceae). in Flora Neotropica.