Tree to 6 (–8) m high, facultatively deciduous. Bark hard or corky, tessellated, pale brown or grey. Branches often weeping. Branchlets hirsute with erect hyaline hairs c. 0.1 mm long and scattered longer ones 0.7 mm, red-glandular trichomes conspicuous on developing leaves. Stipules on flowering stems straight, rather brittle, subspiny, 1.5–2 mm long, often wanting. Leaves: axis 60–80 mm long (including petiole c. 10 mm), indumentum similar to branchlets; gland sessile, 1–1.5 mm long, 0.3–0.5 mm wide, situated immediately below lowest pair of pinnae; pinnae 12–16 pairs, 10–20 mm long; pinnules 15–26 pairs, oblong, 1.8–2.5 mm long, 0.5–0.7 mm wide, midrib prominent on lower surface, long hairs on margin. Heads globular, 13–20 (–30)-flowered, cream-coloured; peduncles 15–45 mm long, indumentum similar to branchlets, involucel at about the middle. Flowers 5-merous; calyx gamosepalous; corolla 2.7–3 mm long; anthers with a globular appendage c. 0.1 mm diam. Pods narrowly oblong, straight edged or constricted between seeds, ±flat, 6–12 cm long, 12–17 mm wide, coriaceous to thinly crustaceous, longitudinally reticulate, glabrous or puberulous. Seed longitudinal, elliptic, flat, 9–12 mm long, 7–8 mm wide, light brown, scarcely arillate.
Grows in low hilly country in rather open vegetation (e.g. eucalypt woodland), on hill tops, slopes and lowlands, in sandy and shallow stony loam, also on creek banks and in open woodland on cracking clay plain.