Erect to sprawling, ± leafy, spinescent shrub to 2.5 m high, with distal branches long-unbranched (often up to 20–30 cm long), or sparingly branched, the ultimate branchlets mostly modified to leafless, simple, slender thorns 5–15 mm long. Branches ± straight or slightly flexuose, moderately pubescent with spreading mostly persisting, non-glandular, simple or distally forked hairs 0.8–1.1 mm long and fewer, smaller, caducous, simple glandular hairs. Leaves at first solitary at the nodes, replaced in time by a succession of single axillary leaves or clusters of a few leaves, sessile to shortly petiolate; lamina obovate to obovate-elliptic, sometimes narrowly so, with bluntly to angularly acute apex, 5–13 mm long, 2–5.5 mm wide, entire, ± soft and membranaceous, very sparsely pubescent with non-glandular, mostly antrorsely curved, simple hairs confined to the midrib above and below and sometimes on the distal margins. Flowers in cyme-like, compact clusters of 1–5, these each subtended by clusters of minute bracts at the bases of some of the thorns, often concentrated towards or at the ends of the branches; pedicels 1.5–3.5 mm long. Calyx 1.6–3 mm long. Corolla 4–8.5 mm long, green, with tube dark purple where exposed (green within calyx) and with or without green striations inside the tube; tube rim with a corona (sometimes vestigial or discontinuous), formed from up to 4 swellings below each lobe; lobes triangular, markedly broadened at base, 2–4 mm long, 0.5–1 mm wide, spreading to inclined, with margins incurved distally. Stamens: longer pair c. 2.5 mm long, shorter pair c. 2 mm long. Mature capsule and seeds not seen.
Occurs in association with granite outcrops in tall open forest of Eucalyptus jacksonii (Red Tingle), E. guilfoylei (Yellow Tingle) and/or E. diversicolor (Karri), growing in brown, gravelly, freely draining clay-loam soils.