Growing to 2 m (6 ft 7 in) high and wide, it is erect to prostrate in habit, with wedge-shaped lobed leaves covered in fine silvery hair.

Occurring throughout the year but more often from August to November, the insignificant single flowers are a dull red in colour and measure around 4 cm (1.6 in) long.

Leaves are similar, but the lobes at the leaf apex are regular and crenate (rounded) in A. cuneatus, but irregular and dentate (toothed) in A. stictus.

[7] Although the precise time and location of its discovery are unknown, Jacques Labillardière, botanist to an expedition under Bruni d'Entrecasteaux, which anchored in Esperance Bay on the south coast of Western Australia on 9 December 1792, most likely collected the first known botanical specimen of Adenanthos cuneatus on 16 December while searching the area between Observatory Point and Pink Lake for the zoologist Claude Riche, who had gone ashore two days earlier and failed to return.

Following an unsuccessful search the following day, several senior members of the expedition were convinced that Riche must have perished of thirst or at the hands of the Australian Aborigines and counselled d'Entrecasteaux to sail without him.

The official account of Baudin's expedition contain notes from Leschenault on vegetation: "Sur les bords de la mer, croissent, en grande abondance, l'adenanthos cuneata, l'adenanthos sericea au feuillage velouté, et une espèce du même genre dont les feuilles sont arrondies.

[18][19] Also synonymised with this species is Adenanthos crenata, published by Carl Ludwig Willdenow's in Kurt Polycarp Joachim Sprengel's 1825 16th edition of Systema Vegetabilium.

This pairing was then neighbour to a larger group that included A. forrestii, A. eyrei, A. cacomorphus, A. ileticos, and several hybrid and unusual forms of A. cuneatus.

[29] The most widely distributed Adenanthos species of the south coast,[30] A. cuneatus is common and locally abundant between King George Sound and Israelite Bay, along the coast and up to 40 km (25 mi) inland, with isolated populations extending west to Walpole and the Stirling Range, and as far east of Israelite Bay as Twilight Cove.

[32] This restriction explains the disjunctions east of Israelite Bay: the species occurs only in those few locations where the existence of cliff-top dunes of deep siliceous sand provide suitable habitat.

[35] Consistent with these edaphic preferences, A. cuneatus is a frequent and characteristic member of the kwongan heathlands commonly found on the sandplains of Southwest Australia.

[37] A 1978 field study conducted around Albany found the honey possum (Tarsipes rostratus) occasionally visited Adenanthos cuneatus, while the western spinebill much preferred the species to other flowers.

[41] A study of Banksia attenuata woodland 400 km (249 mi) southeast of Perth across 16 years, and following a wave of P. cinnamomi infestation, showed that A. cuneatus populations were not significantly reduced in diseased areas.

[43] Specimens in coastal dune vegetation showed some sensitivity to the fungus Armillaria luteobubalina, with between a quarter and a half of plants exposed succumbing to the pathogen.

George Lullfitz, a Western Australian nurseryman, recommends growing it as a rambling ground cover in front of other shrubs, or in a rockery.