Low dense mounded or prostrate shrub to 50 cm tall, with branches often arching. Branchlets angular and ribbed, tomentose to villous or loosely so, usually secund. Leaves narrowly elliptic to oblong-lanceolate, 2-9 cm long, 2-8 mm wide; upper surface sparingly punctate; margins shortly refracted vertically about intramarginal vein; lower surface appearing subvillous (subsericeous with numerous longer emergent ascending often dark hairs, these occasionally lacking). Conflorescence erect, terminal, subsessile, dense, subglobose to broadly subsecund, often held at ground level at edge of or underneath foliage. Flowers acroscopic. Flower colour: perianth dull deep crimson to black-maroon, with white inner beard displayed; style maroon. Perianth subsericeous outside, with a conspicuously tomentose to villous limb, or rarely subsericeous throughout, bearded inside. Pistil 10-12 mm long; style with curve stronger near apex, and with minute papilloid hairs scattered over apical 3-5 mm; pollen-presenter oblique. Follicle narrowly ovoid, c. 18 mm long, glabrous.
Grows in poorly drained depressions, swamp margins, or moist rock pockets in pavement, in sandy soils over sandstone or pebbly ironstone.
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