Erect, few-branched shrub up to 1m tall with branches that are leafy in the upper parts and bare and knotty below. Leaves grey-green, opposite, overlapping, ascending, giving a geometric neatness to the plant; few pink to dark pink flowers flushed with white in a congested head at tips of branches, subtended by sticky floral bracts.

The floral bracts secrete a sticky balsam in which small insects are caught and the flowers are agglutinated by a viscid secretion also capable of catching small insects - hence the common name Vlieebos.

Named after T.M. Salter (1883-1969), officer in Royal Navy; retired to the Cape in 1931; amateur botanist and plant collector; assisted at the Bolus Herbarium