plant stoloniferous, about 1 m high. leaves 12–17 in a loosely cyathiform rosette, nearly straight, 3–10 dm long; sheath short and indistinct; blade ligulate, abruptly acute, apiculate, pungent, 4–6 cm wide, glabrous and pale green above with spots of dark green, covered beneath with fine appressed cinereous scales, subdensely serrulate, broadly channeled. inflorescence: peduncle erect, stout; peduncle bracts erect, densely imbricate, foliaceous, acute or acuminate, spinulose-serrate; fertile part simple with flowers manyranked, densely spicate, cylindric or slenderly conic, 1–4 dm long, 30–55 mm in diameter; floral bracts equaling or longer than the flowers but with the upper half sharply reflexed, lance-ovate, acuminate, pungent, 12–15 mm long, densely spinoseserrate, bright red, glabrous above, sparsely white-furfuraceous beneath. flowers suberect, 2 cm long; sepals asymmetric, acute, pungent, 13 mm long, white with the apex rose, free; petals fugacious, ligulate, obtuse, barely exserted, bearing 2 oblique denticulate scales near the base. stamens included, the second series short-connate with the petals. pistil: ovary stoutly obconic, glabrous, white; placentae apical; ovules caudate.Edited from : Smith & Downs 1979. Bromelioideae (Bromeliaceae) in Flora Neotropica.