Dense round shrub growing to 45cm. Aniseed-scented, lance-shaped leaves are often hairy on the margins. Flowers are white or mauve; long lance-shaped staminodes.

The Rutaceae family has bean-shaped seeds which ripen to a shiny black with a waxy eliasome body at one end; seeds are ejected by an elastic mechanism of the inner wall of the fruit, to a metre or more; seeds are gathered and buried by ants which feed on the protein rich eliasome; seeds left underground are triggered to germinate by smoke from veld fires.