Plants single or clustering, flowering to 50 cm. Stems short. Leaves 20--40, many-ranked, erect to spreading, gray, 30--45 ´ 1--2.2 cm, appressed-grayish-scaly; sheath dark rust-colored, broadly elliptic, conspicuously inflated, forming small pseudobulb, 3--4 cm wide; blade narrowly triangular, leathery, channeled to involute, apex attenuate. Inflorescences: scape conspicuous, erect, 15--35 cm, 3--6 mm diam.; bracts densely imbricate, erect to spreading, like leaves but gradually smaller; sheath of bracts narrowing gradually into blade; spikes erect, 2-pinnate, narrowly elliptic, compressed, 2--6 ´ 1--1.5 cm, apex acute; lateral branches 3--13. Floral bracts imbricate, erect, red, broad (covering all or most of rachis, rachis not visible at anthesis), elliptic, keeled, 2--2.5 cm, leathery, base not visible at anthesis, apex acute, surfaces glabrous, venation even to slight. Flowers 5--40, conspicuous; sepals with adaxial pair connate, lanceolate, keeled, 2--2.4 cm, thin-leathery, veined, apex acute, surfaces slightly scaly; corolla tubular, petals erect, violet, ligulate, to 5 cm; stamens exserted; stigma exserted, conduplicate-spiral. Fruits to 3.8 cm.

Flowering winter--summer. Epiphytic, usually on Taxodium, in swamps and well-lit hammocks; 0--30 m; Fla.

Tillandsia ´ smalliana has usually been misdetermined as T. polystachia (Linnaeus) Linnaeus, a common Caribbean species not known to occur in Florida.

The probable parentage of Tillandsia ´ smalliana is T. balbisiana Schultes f. ´ T. fasciculata Swartz.