Tillandsia kegeliana Mez

Plant acaulescent, 9-14 cm tall, with a small crateriform or spreading rosette of many cinereous-green leaves. Leaves 7-15 cm long, exceeding the inflorescence, stiff-chartaceous and often involute-subulate when dry; sheaths ample, but not always distinct, chartaceous, merging or contracted into the blades, (broadly) ovate, scarcely inflated-convex, 2.5-3.5 x 1.5-2.7 cm, densely and closely appressed-or punctulate-lepidote, with brown centered scales, pale-green outside, often purple-red inside; blades arching and often turning secund, thin-coriaceous, very narrowly triangular, 5-12 x 0.5-1.4 cm, often with purple-red margins, attenuately acute, densely appressed-lepidote, soon partly less so at the upper side. Inflorescence (sub-)pendulous, simple, 8-14 cm long; scape often strongly curved downward, 3-9.5 cm long, 1-3 mm in diam., glabrous or sparsely lepidote at the apex, concealed by its bracts and the leaves; scape bracts erect or the blade secund, imbricate, ovate to lanceolate, with the foliaceous blades exceeding the scape, (sub)densely cinereous-lepidote; spike ascending, fan-like, very strongly complanate, 2.5-5 x 3-4.5 cm, emarginate or subacute, densely and distichously 2-5(-8)-flowered (appearing subdense when dry), with a few imbricate sterile bracts at the base and one at the apex; rachis very short, hidden at anthesis, flexuous, bluntly angled, minutely lepidote; floral bracts somewhat spreading with the flowers, imbricate at anthesis, but the upper ones with free tips, coriaceous, with even or faintly veined surface when dry, (broadly) ovate, 2.4-2.8 cm long, 4-5 times as long as the internodes, much exceeding and closely enfolding the sepals, with very broad membranaceous margins, apiculate, ecarinate, but sharply conduplicate (appearing alate), incurved, sparsely and minutely lepidote, lustrous-green with reddish margins to wholly reddish. Flowers tubular-erect, (sub-) sessile; receptacle obconic, alate-angled when dry, ca. 2-3 mm long; sepals thin-coriaceous, with finely veined surface only when dry, elliptic or oblong, 1.6-1.9 cm long, obscurely apiculate, slightly incurved at the extreme apex, almost free, posterior ones bluntly carinate at the base, sparsely and minutely brown-lepidote, less so inside; petals slightly turning downward (secund), lanceolate, 3-4 cm long, obtuse, purple-red; stamens just exserted, the shorter 3 about equaling and the longer 3 exceeding the pistil and petals, filaments slender, terete, at least near the apex, green, anthers dorsifixed (at 1/2), sagittate, ca. 2 mm long; ovary ovoid, ca. 5 mm long, tapering or contracted into the slender style. Capsule cylindric, to over 5 cm long, attenuate, apiculate.