Erect to straggling, sometimes procumbent shrubs 0.3–1 (–1.5) m high (occasionally shorter at exposed sites), single-stemmed at base. Young stems sparsely to moderately pilose with long white simple hairs to 3.5 mm long over shorter hairs to 0.5 mm. Leaves sessile, spreading, scattered, oblong to obovate, rarely elliptic, (10–) 20–35 (–60) mm long, (3.5–) 5–15 (–25) mm wide (often reduced on flowering branches); margins flat, entire or with a few distal, shallow, blunt teeth, sometimes finely callus-toothed owing to prominent marginal hair tubercles; adaxial surface sparsely pilose with tubercle-based hairs 1–3 (–6) mm long especially along the margins, without or rarely with a sparse underlayer of short hairs; abaxial surface as for the adaxial; apex acute and usually apiculate with a short, callus tip, rarely ± obtuse. Flowers single, terminal on branchlets and in upper leaf axils, sessile. Bracts 1–4, dark brown, scarious, broadly ovate to orbicular, acute to apiculate, 1–4 mm long, glabrous to sparsely pilose and ciliate; primary and secondary bracts similar. Sepals ovate, (4.5–) 6–9 mm long, abaxially sparsely to densely pilose with hairs as for the leaves (rarely almost glabrous), adaxially glabrous except for some short, appressed hairs distally; midribs not prominent; outer sepals long-acuminate; inner sepals acuminate to apiculate, broader than the outer and less pilose, with scarious, ciliate margins; buds distinctly rostrate. Petals 5, yellow, broadly obovate, (6–) 10–16 mm long, emarginate. Stamens (13–) 30–50 (–72), distributed in 3 groups between the carpels; filaments free, 1.8–3.0 mm long, not closely appressed to the carpels; anthers oblong, 1.0–1.7 mm long, dehiscing by short introrse longitudinal slits at the apex (appearing porate); staminodes few or absent. Carpels (2) 3; ovaries globose, glabrous; styles spreading laterally and excentrically from near the carpel apex, 1.8–3 mm long. Ovules 2 per carpel. Seeds globose, c. 1.7 mm in diam., yellowish, with a very short, fimbriate, membranous aril.
Grows in loamy to sandy soils over granite, laterite or (a few specimens) limestone, mostly in karri and moist jarrah–marri forest, and in Agonis flexuosa thickets close to the coast.