DESCRIPTION
Leaves fifteen to twenty in a sessile utricular rosette, lorate-lanceolate, two or three feet long, three or four inches broad at the dilated ckasping base, two or three inches in the middle, subcoriaceous in texture, thinly white lepidote on both sides, especially on the under surface, narrowed gradually to a cuspidate tip, margined with crowded lanceolate small spreading brown prickles, which grow gradually less from the base of the leaf upwards. Peduncle about a foot long, stout, stiffly erect, clothed throughout with thin white lepidote tomentum, furnished with numerous reflexing persistent crimson lanceolate bract-leaves with toothed margins. Flowers in a dense oblong spike three or four inches long, each subtended by a minute lanceolate membranous bract. Calyx including the ovary half an inch long, clothed throughout with white tomentum; sepals about as broad as long, oblique, much imbricated, furnished with a large pungent cusp. Petals lingulate, half an inch long, blue when they first open, turning red as they fade, furnished each with a pair of minute fimbriated scales at the base. Stamens and pistil reaching to the summit of the sepals – J G Baker

Illustration
Figs.1 and 2 entire flowers – life-size; fig.3 a calyx-segment, of unusually irregular form; fig.4 a petal and a couple of stamens; fig.5 two anthers, showing their insertion on the filament; fig.6 stigmas and summit of style; fig.7 horizontal section of ovary; - all more or less enlarged
2010 Butcher's note: If this is the same as the Wendland specimen then Smith treats this as a staminate plant and yet to me both stamen and stigma seem functional as drawn. Thus Aechmea mariae-reginae is trioecious in line with several Catopsis which Smith also missed.

DESCRIPTION.
Acaulescent. leaves about sixteen in a tuft, lorate, shortly acuminate, sheathing at the base, three feet long, five inches wide, nearly glabrous above, white furfuraceous beneath; spines at the centre of the leaf three lines apart and straight, the lowermost decurved, the uppermost upcurved. Peduncle nearly a foot long; bracts dentate, the lower imbricate, with a crimson, elliptic, inflated sheath and a green, ovate-acuminate blade, the uppermost rosulate, ovate, crimson, five inches long, two and a quarter inches wide; spike oblong, five inches long, two inches wide. Calyx rigid, white, lepidote outside; lobes four lines long, suborbicular, concave, shortly awned. Corolla shortly exserted, pale green; petals seven lines long, a line and a half wide, narrowly oblong, emarginate, with two fimbriate scales at the base. Stamens inserted about half-way up the corolla; anthers oblong, mucronate, about twice as long as the filaments. Style shortly three-lobed. Fruit three to six angled, white lepidote, green below, pale rose and pyramidal above, an inch and a quarter long, crowned by the spreading awns of the persistent sepals – C H Wright
Illustration Fig.1. portion of calyx and pistil; 2, portion of corolla laid open; 3. anther; 4. apex of style; 5. whole plant; - 1-4, enlarged; 5. much reduced

Translated by Butcher
For more than three months, visitors to the Continental Company establishment had the opportunity to admire the brilliant inflorescence of one of these Bromeliads in its majestic bearing and imposing aspect, with the ample and huge foliage, that makes you immediately think of the Tropics, their homeland. The beautiful enclosed illustration gives a faithful portrayal of this inflorescence, which we can see for the first time in outline. The numerous buds, well beyond a hundred, that completes the stem, must bloom again, as it is only after their complete development that perfect reasoned knowledge can be determined for this plant. Until this work is made by the scholarly bromeliograph Mr. Ed. Morren who has promised his assistance, we limit ourselves to present this brilliant species illustration to our readers under the name of Aechmea Lalindei in remembrance to an eminent amateur of plants, Mr. Lalinde, who lives in New Grenada from where he sent the species to M J Linden in 1867.
This species is very big; it is 1.50m high and 3.00m diameter. The leaves numbering about thirty, are 0.12m to 0.17m long and are arranged in immense rosette; they are erect, rigid, gracefully reflexing, 1.50m long, with sheaths, with small green thorns along the edges of the blades; these leaves are a beautiful green, except the upper ones that, more and more reduced, passing to the spathes of the stem but do not take on the red colouration. The erect inflorescence exceeds the level of foliage; the cylindrical shaft is donned with lanceolate spathes, ending in a tip, the large, wide and stretched out upper ones are folded on the stem; they are the most beautiful red. The flowers are arranged in a dense spike, in spiral fashion and very numerous. The bud, white greenish, have a purplish pink top.
The plant does not need any particular care; it grows perfectly in a hot greenhouse in light and fibrous compost.
- Em. Rodigas