plant flowering over 6 dm high. leaves ligulate, to 6 dm long, 3–6 cm wide, sub coriaceous, minutely lepidote beneath, serrate with fine brown teeth, 1–1.5 mm long and averaging about 6 mm apart, attenuate, terminating in an elongate dark-brown horny mucro peduncle erect, much shorter than the leaves, 5–6 mm in diameter, glabrous at least in age; peduncle bracts erect, densely imbricate, narrowly lanceolate, acuminate, chartaceous, pungent, spinulose. inflorescence once-branched, thyrsoid, 1–3 dm long, 6–7 cm in diameter, dense at apex, interrupted toward base; primary bracts like the pedunclebracts, much indurated toward apex, the lower serrulate and much exceeding the spikes, the upper entire and shorter than the spikes; spikes broadly ellipsoid, 2–3 cm long, short-stalked or sessile; floral bracts ovate-lanceolate, evenly acuminate into a broad flat dark-brown spine, 10–14 mm long. flowers: sepals strongly asymmetric, 5 mm long including the short mucro, sparsely lepidote with pale appressed scales. pistil: ovary much enlarged in fruit, sparsely lepidote. fruits: seeds fusiform, 2 mm long.Edited from : Smith & Downs 1979. Bromelioideae (Bromeliaceae) in Flora Neotropica.