An annual shrub. It has extensive rhizomes or underground stems. The above ground stems are 15-50 cm tall. The leaves are opposite or in 3 to 4's. The leaf blade is 11 cm long by 3 cm wide. The fruit are 1.5 cm long and wide. They are purple black.
Flowers usually solitary, in leaf-axils or, when borne near base of shoot, in the axils of bracts, rarely in very short, 2–9-flowered racemes; pedicels 0·6–2 cm. long; bracteoles 0·1–0·2 cm. long, deltate, persistent.
Extensively rhizomatous, geoxylic suffrutex; stems 15–50 cm. tall, caespitose, usually unbranched and burnt back to ground level each year, occasionally escaping fire and then sparsely branched.
Leaf-lamina 4 x 1·2–7 x 0–6 or 11 x 3 cm., broadest near the middle, narrowly elliptic or narrowly rhombic to linear, apex obtuse, base cuneate.
Sepals 4, 0·15 x 0·25–0·3 x 0–3 cm., debate or hemi-orbicular-deltate, ciliolate.
Style 0·5 cm. long; style-head 0·1 cm. in diameter, capitate.
Petals 4, 0·6–0·7 x 0·4 cm., Ungulate, ciliolate.
Fruit c. 1·5 x 1·5 cm., purple-black, subglobose.
Leaves opposite or in 3s or 4s, rarely alternate.