Ascending, rapid-growing, branched shrub, up to 1.5 m tall, with a perennial, tuberous base, re-sprouting after fires. Rootstock fleshy. The stems are ascending, 4-angled (square); the older main branch almost becoming rounded (terete), covered in short, white, glandular, translucent hairs. Leaves leathery in opposite pairs (decussate), spreading to ascending spreading, broadly egg-shaped-triangular, 80–160 mm long and 45–85 mm wide; the petiole 10–25 mm long. The leaf surface is covered in short transparent hairs, some that are glandular. The lower surface with white swollen veins, which are also covered in short hairs. The leaf tip ends in a sharp, but soft point and the base is wedge-shaped. The leaf margin are beset with 18–20 pairs of short, rounded teeth (crenate) in the upper two-thirds.

The inflorescence consists of elongated, pyramidal panicles at the branch ends and these are 300–350 mm long and 100–120 mm in diameter. The rachis is green, often becoming maroon-greenish and densely covered in glandular hairs. The young inflorescence in bud stage bearing large protective bracts arranged like the tiles on a roof (imbricate), soon deciduous. The bracts are broadly egg-shaped-triangular, 10–14 × 8–12 mm long. Flowers are alternately arranged on ascending, forked side branches, 45–80 mm long; each flower on a pedicle of 5 mm long. The flowers are about 20–22 mm long. The calyx is 5 mm long, enlarging to 8 mm in fruit, glandular hairy; the upper lip egg-shaped, 3–4 mm long. The corolla (flower) is tubular at the base and sharply curved (sigmoid), opening up in a 4-lobed upper lip and the large, lower, boat-shaped lip is 15 mm long, violet-blue and sparsely beset with translucent hairs. The corolla tube at the base about 1.5–2.0 mm long, abruptly expanding after the curve; upper lip ascending, partially reflexed. The fruit is a small, oblong-rounded, brownish nutlet 1.5 mm long and 1.2 mm in diameter.

Flowering time: autumn, but also in mid-summer (November to March in the southern hemisphere).