Shrubs to 6 m tall, multistemmed, much-branched, glabrous except that young branchlets and bract tips are ferruginous-hairy. Adult leaves linear to narrowly obovate, 4-18 cm long, 5-20 mm wide, entire or slightly sinuate-lobed, somewhat coriaceous; apices obtuse or acute, rarely acuminate; quite smooth when dry, between moderately raised veins. Intermediate leaves irregularly pinnatifid. Conflorescences many, depressed-obovoid, 28-65-flowered, 6-10 cm diam.; anthesis basipetal; involucral bracts inconspicuous, mostly 12-45 mm long, pink and/or green. Flowers with pedicels 10-40 mm long; tepals 25-40 mm long, cohering along margins in a slit tube, pink to deep crimson outside, bright red inside; style incurved. Body of follicle 4.5-7 cm long.
Grows in the margins of streams or, occasionally, on mountain slopes, at 540-760 m alt., in fringing temperate rainforest or wet eucalypt forest.
Home