plant stoloniferous; stolons stout, usually in horizontal position, rarely slightly pendant or ascendant, round, 5–15 cm long, 1–1.5 cm wide, with distichous, spiny, green, usually lepidote cataphylls, the lower ones carinate, spiraled arranged at distal end; new rosettes with spiny foliar blades, spines very thick, black and up to 4 mm, 6 mm apart; rosettes crateriform or funnel-shaped, of 14–30(–50) leaves. leaves spreading, 50–70 (–120) cm long, green, the inner ones reddish especially in lower half and the apex, coriaceous; sheath 10–13 cm long, 11–16 cm wide, green or (dark) brown, adaxially lustrous and glabrous beneath, densely brown lepidote, inflated, entire; blade ligulate to linear, long attenuate (or acute and apiculate), pungent, (20-)30–60(–105) cm long, 3–5.5 cm wide, green or the innermost tinged of dark red, sometimes whitish beneath, laxly serrate with dark brown, usually antrorse spines, basal ones 4–7 mm long. inflorescence many flowered, (simple or) compound, 6–8 cm in diameter; branches about 6 or 7, 12–18 flowered; primary bracts elliptic with a short purple mucro, 4–9 cm long, 24–32 mm wide, membranaceous, entire, lepidote; floral bracts lanceolate(-ovate), acute or apiculate, pungent,( 29-)38–43(–57) mm long, 13–15 mm wide, exceeded by the sepals, nerved, sparsely brown and punctulate lepidote on both sides. flowers (50-)58–65 mm long, short pedicellate; pedicel slenderly obconic, 2–15(?) mm long; sepals free, even, (19-)26–29(–36) mm long, 9–10 mm wide, asymmetrical obovate (with an extending hyalin margin at one side), stiff and fleshy at apex, apiculate or acute, abaxially glabrous, adaxially sparsely brown lepidote, adaxial ones carinate; petals 35–55 mm long, white, surpasslng the sepals by 2–10 mm, elliptic, acute; petals* scales ligulate, as long as the stamens, apically acute and irregular. stamens 4.5 mm long, linear, dorsifixed at about the middle, bilobed at base and apiculate at apex. pistil: ovary subcylindrical, (15-)33 mm long, 5 mm in diameter, glabrous, bicarinate (flattened), epigynous tube shallow (1 mm); stigma convolute-blade, with three laminar lobes, with stigmatic, glandulose surface in the distal portion of the lobes; placentation apical. fruits up to 20 mm long, blue when mature; ovules long caudate; seeds ca 6x1.5 mm, brown, terrate, slightly wider at one end.Edited from : Gouda (cont.updated). Descriptions from Taxasoft (DeltaXML) .