Plants 250–60 tall. Free part of leaf often short, 50–150 x 6–10mm, often blackish. Spike 100–15 long, 10–35-flowered. Ovary sessile, long, green or black, appressed to stem. Flowers crowded, lightly scented, 15–18 x 8–10mm, greenish-brown, dark green or golden-brown with darker stripes, lateral sepals and labellum lamina crystalline white, callus white, column pink. Dorsal sepal 8–10 x 3.5–5mm, incurved. Lateral sepals usually fused at tip but base free, erect behind labellum, each sepal 8–10 x 3mm, erect or recurved. Petals 6–8 x 2.3mm, incurved or spreading, pointed. Labellum sessile, narrow, base humped, sharply recurved below middle, 8–10 x 3–4mm, margins intensely crinkled. Callus narrow, flat, extending past labellum bend, base deeply pouched.
Widespread, mainly occurring in inland areas but often localised and found as scattered individuals or in small groups growing in freely draining to moisture-retentive sand among shrubs in mallee communities and in low heathland closer to coast; also often in sand on road verges, surviving roadworks and grading by virtue of its deeply buried tubers.
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