Prostrate to low spreading clumping shrub 0.3 m high, to 2 m across, or sometimes erect to 2 m. Leaves entire, linear or rarely bifid, 4-25 cm long, 1-5 mm wide, often congested and clustered, leathery, straight or slightly curled, not pungent; margins revolute to refracted; lower surface on either side of midvein usually obscured, 2-grooved, sometimes exposed. Conflorescence erect, terminal, either (usually) much-branched and irregularly distant on long, secund trailing peduncles up to 2.5 m long, or (occasionally) simple and few-branched and shortly pedunculate and mostly within the foliage; unit conflorescence 2-6-flowered, secund, opening subsynchronously; ultimate rachis 3-5 mm long, subsericeous or sparsely so, sometimes flat. Flowers at least sometimes acroscopic, but possibly variable. Flower colour: perianth red or sometimes deep pink, yellow and/or grey at curve, with a blackish limb; style red. Perianth sparsely subsericeous with very short-armed biramous hairs and often also minute erect glandular hairs outside, villous inside in lower half. Pistil 19-24 mm long, glabrous; ovary with 2 rounded protuberances on ventral flank. Follicles erect, 10-18 mm long, when mature with faint ventral lobing or ridging, otherwise granulate.
Grows in sandy to clay soils, in open woodland, open forest, mallee heath and heathland.
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