plant flowering 6 dm high. leaves many in a dense rosette and forming a very large ventricose tank, 4 dm long; sheath ovate-elliptic, covered on both sides with appressed allutaceous scales; blade erect, ligulate, acuminate, 30 mm wide, very densely serrate with straight spreading or recurving spines 5 mm long, densely lepidote on both sides with pale appressed scales. inflorescence: peduncle slender, erect, about equaling the leaves, densely white-tomentellous; peduncle bracts lanceolate, acute, entire, erect, especially the lower ones shorter than the internodes; fertile part once-branched throughout, wholly fertile, cylindric, 20 cm long, 45 mm in diameter, densely tomentellous; primary bracts upper ones greatly reduced; branches spreading; floral bracts spreading, spinoseacuminate from a very broadly ovate base, strongly navicular-convex, to 6 mm long, scarcely if at all adnate to the rachis, puberulous or glabrate. flowers sessile, to 16 mm long; sepals strongly asymmetric, distinctly mucronate, to 4 mm long, subfree; petals acute, appendaged well above the base. pistil: ovary ellipsoid, more or less trigonous, scarcely constricted at apex, to 4 mm long; epigynous tube distinct, urceolate; placentae apical; ovules long-caudate.Edited from : Smith & Downs 1979. Bromelioideae (Bromeliaceae) in Flora Neotropica.