; 0 flowering plant over 1 meter high. leaves over 8 dm; long, bearing appressed white scales with brown centers; sheath broadly subelliptic, ca 2 dm; long, brown; blade ligulate, broadly acute and cuspidate, to 9 cm; wide, subdensely serrate with dark spines 3 mm; long, faintly banded (! foster). inflorescence: peduncle to 1 cm; in diameter, red (! foster), white-flocculose, soon glabrous; peduncle bracts imbricate, large, elliptic, entire, subcoriaceous when dry, densely pale-lepidote; fertile part twice-branched, to 35 cm; long, lax except near the apex; axes rather slender, soon glabrous; primary bracts like the peduncle-bracts but much smaller, typically much shorter than the lower branches but equaling them in small specimens; branches spreading, the lowest typically enlarged to 15 cm; long and with the spikes somewhat separated; floral axes short but distinct. flowers in broad digitately clustered spikes; floral bracts broadly ovate, mucronate, 20 mm; long, exceeding the ovary, entire, broadly convex, carinate toward apex, even or nearly so, glabrous, yellow; sepals asymmetric with a broad wing that is distended and auriculate at base, 15 mm; long including the short mucro, short-connate; petals appendaged. pistil: ovary glabrous, the epigynous tube 3 mm; high; pl; l, fig; 1 basal branch of inflorescence x 1/2; fig; 2 sepal x 1.Edited from : Smith 1962b. (protologue) Notes on Bromeliaceae XVIII .