plant caulescent, propagating by long rhizomes, flowering 1.5 m high; stem leafy, straight, 30 cm high, 5 cm in diameter, leafless toward base. leaves 30–40, arching decurved, to 12 dm long; sheath narrow and indistinct, entire; blade 6–7 cm wide, deeply channeled, coriaceous, reddish green and lustrous above, densely lepidote beneath, laxly serrate with curved antrorse and retrorse spines 10 mm long. inflorescence: peduncle erect, 20–30 cm high, ca 25 mm in diameter, furfuraceous; peduncle bracts foliaceous, reduced, reddish; fertile part simple, strobilate, ovoid, to 17 cm long, 9 cm in diameter, 150–200-flowered; floral bracts densely imbricate, lanceolate, acuminate, erect, nearly equaling the petals, serrulate, red, cinereous-lepidote, persistent. flowers opening in succession; sepals erect, asymmetric, ovate, narrowed at base, apiculate, 10–13 mm long, conduplicate or merely channeled, thick with membranous margins, red orange, sparsely lepidote; petals tubular-erect, 4–5 cm long, the claw oblong, white, the blade lanceolate, purplish. stamens included, adnate to the petals; syncarp 20 cm long, 10 cm in diameter, succulent.Edited from : Smith & Downs 1979. Bromelioideae (Bromeliaceae) in Flora Neotropica.