The plant features bluish green or grey sausage-shaped stems, and leaves (which appear 50% of the time) that are olive green atop and purplish below. It is usually dormant and leafless for most part of the year, but would come to life in winter with new leaves and white to pinkish discoid flowers. It forms a sprawling clump or a subshrub that is 22-40 cm high (though much taller if shaded and overwatered) and would spread by tubers which develop an underground mainstay system.

The inflorescences are 12-20 cm tall, forked corymbs with small heads and without rays, that are mainly made of cup-shaped, insignificant and repugnant-odoured disk-flowers that are pollinated by beetles and bees.^[3]

A rare and an unusual plant, it best grown as an ornamental plant as a container plant in well draining soil and part shade.^[4] It is also drought-resistant, growing in dry arid areas in southern Africa. It can grown indoors as a pot plant, but for it to thrive outdoors the temperature should not regularly drop below 7°C (45°F), although it can survive in temperatures as low as -4°C (25°F).^[5] Its cultivar 'Candlelight' has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.^[6]

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  Leaves in a shrub setting
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  In a container
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  Growing in a rock garden
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  Leaves detail
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  Flower cluster