Leaf 50–130 mm long; free part 8–12 mm long, ending below flowers. Spike 8–20 mm long, 2–25-flowered. Flowers crowded, nodding, 4–5 × 4 mm, dark purplish red. Dorsal sepal 3.5 × 2 mm, with dark bands; margins glabrous; apex blunt. Lateral sepals obliquely erect, widely divergent, 4.5 × 1.4 mm; base not humped. Petals 3 × 1.3 mm, with dark bands; margins glabrous; apex blunt. Labellum stiffly hinged, narrowly ovate to ovate, 6 × 3.5 mm, thin-textured; margins with coarse blackish hairs to 1.5 mm long; apex recurved. Callus thickest and broadest near base then long and linear, extending to labellum apex.
Highly localised, elusive and rarely seen; typically this orchid grows in subalpine swamps among dense sedges and in moist herbfield in wet, black, peaty soil. A couple of populations found near Three Mile Dam in Kosciuszko National Park, N.S.W., grow in open, grassy herbfield.
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