Much-branched straggling small shrub with brittle, whitish branches, totally glabrous, 0.3–1.25 m, forming hummocks, or up to 3 m with support of bushes. Leaves narrowly linear to ± filiform, very variable in size, the largest to c. 8 x 0.8 cm, reducing and much narrower above, attenuate below, midrib pale on the lower surface. Flowers white to pink, in slender spikes up to 8 cm long, the peduncle and axis almost capillary in flower, thicker in fruit. Outer tepals of fertile flower c. 2.25–2.5 mm, broadly ovate, deeply concave, 3-nerved with the lateral nerves sometimes branched below; inner tepals slightly shorter, broadly obovate to almost round, blunt or erose, hyaline, shortly 1-nerved, with a darker central vitta. Lateral sterile flowers rapidly accrescent in fruit, each forming a broad, membranous, dark-veined wing c. 1.5–1.8 cm wide. Fruit strongly compressed, c. 2.75 mm, at least as wide as long.
