Plants single or in small tufts. Leaf often arising at an acute angle to soil surface, 180–300 × 15–30 mm, thick, leathery, dark green with reddish base, whole leaf often yellowish green. Flower stem 200–500 × 4–7 mm, 5–25-flowered. Sterile bracts 1 or 2. Flowers 25–42 mm across, cream, pink, greenish blue, pale blue, greyish blue, orange, reddish or bronze with a coppery sheen, scented. Sepals and petals 12–20 × 4–10 mm, thick-textured, concave; labellum narrower than other segments. Column 5–8 × 2.3–4.5 mm, same colour as perianth, 3-lobed; post-anther lobe not hooding anther, 2–3 × 1–1.5 mm, strap-like, narrowed upwards, incurved, reddish brown with purplish collar, apex yellow, irregularly toothed; auxiliary lobes strap-like, 1–1.7 mm long, incurved and often interlocking, apex yellow, irregularly toothed; column arms converging, porrect to obliquely erect, c. 1.5 mm long; hair tufts toothbrush-like, dense, hairs white, 1–2 mm long. Anther at base of column.
Widely distributed, but now restricted to isolated populations; ranges from coastal districts (where it grows in grassland, heathland, sedgeland and shrubby forest in seasonally wet, sandy soil), to inland areas in drier forest and mallee communities, usually in freely draining, sandy soil. This orchid is commonest in open situations growing among low vegetation, but it also occurs in taller, shrubby habitats.
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