plant flowering about 70 cm high. leaves ca 30 cm long and 2.5 cm wide above of the sheaths; sheath suborbicular, brown, glabrous; blade narrowly triangular, rigid, succulent, densely covered with a coat of whitish-grey trichomes, becoming glabrous adaxially, their margins very laxly but coarsely spinose (the distance between the spines varies from (16-) 22–45 mm), leaf-apex very rigid and pungent. inflorescence: peduncle erect, ca 30 cm long, subterete, densely grey lepidote but becoming glabrous; peduncle bracts few, erect, subfoliaceous, 16–23 cm long, distinctly surpassing the internodes, rigid, pungent, laxely serrate, densely lepidote on both surfaces; fertile part ca 20 cm long, sub-twice-branched; inflorescence* axis like the peduncle; primary bracts subfoliaceous, like the peduncle bracts but shorter, 8.5–10 cm long, erect, about three times as long as the partial-florescences; partial-florescences consisting of two densely strobilate spikes; spikes densely manyflowered, 2.5–3 cm long, ca 1.3 cm wide, with several sterile, narrowly triangular, acuminate, lepidote bracts at the base; floral bracts 14–15 mm long, 6–7 mm wide, ovate, long acuminate, entire, brown, subcoriaceous, abaxially very sparsely lepidote, faintly nerved, adaxially glabrous. flowers subsessile (pedicels very stout, ca 1.5 mm long), 13–15 mm long; sepals free, 6–8 mm long, 4–4.5 mm wide, broadly ovate, acuminate, coriaceous, brown, scarious and paler at the margins, glabrous, the adaxial two obtuse but distinctly carinate, the abaxial one ecarinate; petals yellow, lanceolate, obtuse, 13.5–14 mm long, 4.5 mm wide in the middle, bearing adaxially a single, 7.5 mm long bifurcate, lacerate scale. stamens of about equal length, surpassing the petals by a fraction of the anthers; filament flattened, straight; anther sublinear, subsagittate, subbasifixed, 3 mm long; gynoecium 12 mm long. pistil: ovary slenderly conical, ca 4 mm long, slightly inferior (for one eighth of its length); placentae axilar, ovules obtuse; style slender, ca 7 mm long, its lobes erect, with ca 1 mm long receptive margins, the lobes individually weakly twisted but not conduplicate spiral.Edited from : Bromelia. (protologue) .