Perennial herb to subshrub, usually 10–80 cm high, sometimes ascending to 2 m in surrounding vegetation. Stems erect to decumbent, glabrous or rarely sparsely vestured with blunt peg-like hairs. Rosette and lower cauline leaves to c. 15 cm long, variably petiolate, the lamina pinnatifid with a large broadly lanceolate terminal lobe, vestured with long-acicular hairs on the upper surface and margins, the distal margins serrate (60–100 mm long, 15–25 mm wide). Mid-cauline leaves lanceolate and broadly petiolate, acute, (?20–) 40–90 mm long, 4–9 mm wide, the serrate to serrulate margins with numerous tooth-like hairs; branch-subtending leaves with auriculate to sagittate bases at the point of leaf insertion, sessile to subsessile. Upper cauline leaves narrowly lanceolate to linear, 10–20 mm long, 1–1.5 mm wide, often with entire margins ciliate with sparse tooth-like hairs, the base usually attenuate at the point of leaf insertion. The cauline leaves reducing to simple, serrate to entire, ciliate, with attenuate base. Inflorecscence an elongating raceme, initially corymbose, elongating during flowering to 20 cm long; branch-terminal racemes often appearing lateral and leaf-opposed, overtopped by a subtending axillary flowering branch. Sepals 0.5–0.75 mm long. Petals reduced or absent. Stamens 2, median. Style short, included. Silicula dehiscent, ovate to elliptic, 2–3 mm long, 1.5–2 mm wide; wing slight in upper half, forming a shallow V-shaped notch; pedicels 3–5 mm long, slender and subterete with a slightly flattened puberulent adaxial surface, horizontal to recurved (erecto-patent to subdeclinate and usually arcuate at fruiting, fide Scarlett 1999: 342). Seeds 1–1.5 mm long; radicle incumbent.
Recorded growing in sandy alluvial soil, in tussock grassland in open riparian forest on river banks, tall wet sclerophyll forest in a sheltered gully, rainforest, on roadsides near forest, a disturbed embankment.