The shrub or small tree typically grows to a height of 5 to 5 m (16 to 16 ft) and has a spreading habit with glabrous branchlets that are sometimes covered in a fine white powdery coating.

The glabrous, leathery and evergreen phyllodes have an inequilaterally narrowly elliptic outline and are sickle shaped with a length of 7 to 12 cm (2.8 to 4.7 in) and a width of 18 to 33 mm (0.71 to 1.30 in) and have three main longitudinal nerves.

It blooms between December and April producing inflorescences in axillary racemes and occasionally on terminal panicles which have spherical flower-heads that have a diameter of about 8 mm (0.31 in) and contain 40 to 75 white coloured flowers.

[2] The species was first formally described by the botanist Leslie Pedley in 1978 as part of the work A revision of Acacia Mill.

[3] It has a scattered distribution over the Cape York Peninsula of Far North Queensland down to around Herberton in the south where it is commonly situated on hills and along creeks growing in sandy soils.