Spreading, prickly, ground-hugging shrub, mostly 25-80 cm tall, occasionally to 1.2 m tall and wide. Branchlets hoary to almost villous when young, glabrescent. Leaves to 20 cm long overall; petiole to c. 13 cm long; lamina terete, 2-3-pinnate, pungent, glabrous, slightly glaucous; pinnae 5-22 mm long. Inflorescence ±globular, appearing flattened when perianths extend, terminal, sessile, c. 25 mm diam.; involucral bracts prominent, numerous, broad, acuminate, coriaceous, often over 20 mm long, ±hoary outside, silky-villous inside, persisting; cone scales linear to narrowly ovate, minutely hairy. Flowers c. 40 mm long, white, yellow or cream, villous. Pollen presenter fusiform, c. 3 mm long, yellow, shortly and sparsely hairy. Cones ±globular, c. 4 cm diam. Nuts c. 8 mm long.
Grows in low shrubland in yellow, white and grey sand, gravel or laterite; also in scrub and heath, in low open mallee and in eucalypt woodland.
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