Shrub or tree 2–3 m tall, gnarled, main branches rather contorted and normally spreading horizontally. Bark fibrous, fissured, grey. Branchlets glabrous. Phyllodes erect, straight, usually terete or subterete, usually 5–10 cm long and 1.5–2 mm wide, pungent, rigid, normally subglaucous, glabrous, indistinctly multistriate. Inflorescences rudimentary 1-headed racemes with axes c. 0.2 mm long, often growing out; peduncles mostly 5–15 mm long, glabrous or sparsely puberulous; spikes 1–3.5 (–5) cm long, not densely flowered. Flowers 5-merous; sepals ¾-united or united into a ±truncate calyx. Pods (submature) narrowly oblong, raised over but not or only slightly constricted between seeds, 4–9 cm long, 5–8 mm wide, firmly chartaceous, glabrous. Seeds (submature) longitudinal, elliptic to oblong, 4–7 mm long, dark brown; funicle/aril small.
Grows in alkaline clay, on ridges, slopes and saline flats, in shrubland.