plant flowering 5–8 dm high. leaves numerous, to 16 dm long; sheath elliptic, ample, dark castaneous, densely buff-lepidote; blade linear, attenuate to a dark pungent cusp, 3–7 cm wide, thick, coriaceous, laxly serrate with dark curved spines 1–4 mm long, densely white-lepidote beneath, soon glabrous above. inflorescence: peduncle curved, red, white-flocculose at first; peduncle bracts imbricate, broadly ovate with a linear blade, fimbriate-serrate, bright rose; fertile part densely once-branched, slenderly cylindric or pyramidal, 2–4 dm long, 9–15 cm in diameter, white-farinose; primary bracts like the peduncle bracts but merely apiculate, about equaling the spikes, divergent; spikes distichously 2–10-flowered, lax, 5- 7 cm long; floral bracts reniform, mucronulate, much shorter than the ovary. flowers: sepals free, strongly asymmetric, with large ascending wing 16–19 mm long, mucronate, purple toward apex; petals bright purple. pistil: ovary cylindric, epigynous tube large; placentae apical; ovules with very short apical appendage.Edited from : Smith & Downs 1979. Bromelioideae (Bromeliaceae) in Flora Neotropica.