plant with caudex 6–9 dm long, flowering shoot 45 cm high. leaves rosulate, 27 cm long; sheath broadly elliptic, 13 cm long, covered with white appressed scales, densely and coarsely purple-spotted above, serrate toward apex; blade ligulate, acute with the extreme apex reflexed, 4 cm wide, flat, white-lepidote beneath, soon glabrous above, laxly serrate with brown spreading teeth 2 mm long, concolorous. inflorescence: peduncle erect, 7 mm in diameter, sparsely white-flocculose; peduncle bracts elliptic, thin, roseate, the lower ones erect, about equaling the internodes, white-lepidote, serrulate at apex, the upper ones divergent, imbricate and massed below the inflorescence, involute, glabrous; fertile part simple, strobilate, cylindric, 4 cm long, 2 cm in diameter, white-flocculose; floral bracts suborbicular, retuse and then apiculate, 10 mm long, thick and bicarinate with thin apex and margins, dark brown. flowers: sepals 8 mm long, connate for 3.5 mm, the free lobes asymmetric, subquadrate, ecarinate, unarmed; petals 17 mm long, bearing fimbriate scales near the middle of the claw, the blades elliptic. stamens included. pistil: ovary with epigynous tube 1 mm long; placentae apical; ovules caudate.Edited from : Smith & Downs 1979. Bromelioideae (Bromeliaceae) in Flora Neotropica.