It is a prostrate shrub with trailing branches, egg-shaped leaves, the lower surface densely covered with star-like hairs, white, petal-like sepals, and smaller, pinkish petals.

Commersonia prostrata is a prostrate shrub that has branches up to 1 m (3 ft 3 in) or more long, and forms dense mats up to 10 cm (3.9 in) high.

[2][3][4] This species was first formally described in 1898 by Joseph Maiden and Ernst Betche who gave it the name Rulingia prostrata in the Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales from specimens Maiden collected near Barbers Creek, between Moss Vale and Goulburn in the same year.

[5][6] In 2011, Carolyn Wilkins and Barbara Whitlock transferred the species to the genus Commersonia as C. prostrata in the journal Australian Systematic Botany.

[8] Dwarf kerrawang grows in open woodland and near the edge of forest and is known from populations on the Southern Highlands and Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, the largest population in the Thirlmere Lakes area, and in a few near-coastal areas of south-eastern Victoria.