The flowers, which appear between August and November, are pale pink-red and cream, with a style which is about 32 mm long.

Later, Ernest Charles Nelson worked with Wrigley while developing a comprehensive taxonomic revision of Adenanthos.

When he eventually published his revision in 1978, he gave this species the specific epithet ileticos from the Greek word for wriggle, as a pun on Wrigley.

[5][4] However Nelson regards this as a "concocted" common name, "rather crudely made up from an English word or two tagged on to unitalicized Adenanthos".

He notes that the leaves of this species resemble neither a cudgel nor the symbol of the clubs card suit, making club-leaf a misnomer; and he adds that Wrigley's "would have respectfully preserved the associations intended by the original author".

[6] This species is known only from a single location around 10 to 30 km (5–20 mi) south of Salmon Gums on the Coolgardie–Esperance Highway in southern Western Australia.

[7] Adenanthos ileticos is considered a suitable background plant because of its unusual leaf shape, but its flowers are not at all showy.