Annual herb, rounded to compact, erect often with spreading branches, up to 12 cm high; indumentum of curved hairs. Whole plant often tinged maroon. Leaves narrowly oblong to oblanceolate or obovate, 6–30 mm long, 2–10 mm wide; apex mostly acute, obtuse or rounded, rarely some leaves emarginate, mucro 0.2–0.5 mm long; petiole 0–2 mm long. Inflorescence axillary or supra-axillary, a raceme, rarely with a solitary flower on internode preceding raceme, up to 5 (–20) mm long, not exceeding the leaves. Pedicel to 0.5 (–1) mm long. Alae perpendicular in fruit (position), herbaceous, lanceolate, oblanceolate, falcate to narrowly dimidiate, 2.0–3.9 mm long, 0.8–1.8 mm wide, with curved hairs or glabrous. Corolla recorded as purple (fresh material not seen); floral appendages shortly fimbriate; upper petal claw c. 0.5 mm wide. Stamens terminate at stigma, stamen monadelphous; staminal flap c. 0.5 mm wide. Style hooked (horseshoe-shaped at apex), flattened dorso-ventrally at base, becoming thickened and terete in middle and dorsoventrally flattened below hook in dried state, with flat stigma along inner surface of hook. Capsule deflexed or reflexed (apex of alae diverging at c. 45° from capsule), lacking wing, symmetrical, oblong, 2.5–4.0 mm long, 2.6–3.7 mm wide; lobe apices rounded and separated. Seed ovoid, 2.5–3.3 mm long, 1.2–1.8 mm wide, with indumentum of fine white or ferruginous hairs. Aril head reduced, 0.4–0.6 mm long, brown where reduced to seed testa and white where appendages originate, with short hairs. Aril appendages 3, linear rarely spathulate or cuneate, 1.0–2.3 mm long.
Found in a variety of habitats, including open woodlands and Acacia shrublands, often with Triodia spp., in sand, clay loam, laterite or silt, or in skeletal soils on stony hill slopes.