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Perennial herb; straggling with stems procumbent or erect. Leaves sessile or subsessile; blade narrowly ovate to elliptic, base narrowing into petiole, apex acute; upper and lower surface with appressed hairs. Ocrea without a spreading herbaceous limb; with appressed bristles. Flowers: peduncles with stalked glands; perianth pink in bud, white to rusty-brown; Nov.-Mar. Fruit a biconvex nut, slightly rugose.
Flowers pedicellate in fascicles of 2–3; fascicles surrounded by bracts and borne in ± dense pedunculate spiciform racemes 2–4 cm long; peduncles 1.5–2 cm long, stout, in pairs from uppermost ocrea, with stalked reddish glands; bracts reddish, with obtuse to rounded apex, glabrous outside, margins glabrous.
Leaf lamina 2–6 × 0.4–1.3 cm, lanceolate to elliptic, acute at the apex, basally attenuate into the petiole, with appressed hairs when young, the oldest leaves glabrescent and with bristles on the midrib of the undersurface and margins.
Perianth pink in bud, white when open turning rust-brown, 3–4 mm long, 5-lobed; lobes 2–3 mm long, oblong-elliptic.
Herb, up to 0.8 m high. Ochrea and main vein of undersurface with strigose hairs. Flowers pink to pinkish white.
Ocrea reddish, up to 2 cm long, membranous, with appressed strigose hairs, truncate, generally with some cilia.
Ovary 1.5–2 mm in diameter, globose, ± compressed; styles 2, united at or shortly below the middle.
Stamens 6–9; filaments 2–2.5 mm long; anthers pink turning white, 0.5 mm long, oblong-ellipsoid.
Nut dark brown to shiny black, 2–2.5 mm in diameter, biconvex-lenticular, slightly rugose.
Stem reddish-brown, prostate or ascending, glabrous.
Perennial straggling or erect herb.
