Shrub to 2 m high and wide, rounded or flat-topped, glabrous, resinous. Bark smooth, later splitting irregularly, grey or dark grey. Branchlets angular towards apices, pale green, brown, or yellowish; ridges resin-crenulated. Phyllodes elliptic-obovate to narrowly elliptic-obovate or sometimes semi-orbicular, oblique, slightly curved to ±straight, often slightly sigmoid, (0.5-) 0.8-2.5 cm long, (3-) 4-10 (-14) mm wide, rigid; apex with a small knob-like mucro; lamina finely longitudinally wrinkled when dry, with 0-3 faintly visible main nerves; minor nerves obscure, sometimes with minor anastomosing; basal gland minute, to 2 mm above pulvinus. Peduncles 5-30 mm long. Heads 7.5-16.5 mm diam., 7-25-flowered, golden; bracteoles not tapered to filiform apex; buds spreading widely. Flowers 5-merous; calyx cupular, 0.7-1.1 mm long, barely dissected; corolla usually 3× longer than calyx, 2.4-3.5 mm long, dissected by 1/2-2/3; petals striated; ovary ±villous. Pods erect, narrowly elliptic to ±linear or linear-oblanceolate to narrowly oblanceolate, basally tapered, ±straight-sided but sometimes indented between some seeds, flat, mostly 2.5-10 cm long, 5-10 mm wide, thinly woody, scurfy, obliquely striate, opening elastically from apex; margins slightly thickened. Seeds oblique, oblong-to narrowly oblong-elliptic, 4-6 mm long, light to dark brown; pleurogram with pale halo; areole open, elongated, depressed; funicle-aril narrowly conical.
Grows in red, sometimes clayey sand over quartzite, limestone, laterite or ironstone, on hills or sandplains, often on flats between parallel sand dunes, in open savannah, scrub heath, grassland or shrubland, often with spinifex.