[1] The plant grows in several types of habitat, including disturbed and cultivated areas.

It has a weak affinity for serpentine soils,[3] growing from sea-level to 5000'.

It is an annual herb producing a slender, reddish stem up to 30 centimeters tall with an inflorescence of widely spaced nodes bearing one to three flowers each.

The fruit is a spherical, red-spotted capsule growing deep within the long sepals.

Colinsia sparsiflora has been found to host discrete populations of Acaulospora AM fungi (AMF (ecology)) on serpentine soil, Glomus on non-serpentine soil types.