It is an erect to spreading shrub with simple, sessile, egg-shaped to lance-shaped leaves with the narrower end towards the base, flowers arranged in panicles on the ends of branches, and three-winged capsules with membranous wings.

[2][3][4] This species was first formally described in 1917 by Alfred James Ewart and Olive Blanche Davies who gave it the name ''Dodonaea peduncularis var.

coriacea in the Flora of the Northern Territory from specimens collected by Gerald Freer Hill on the Barclay-McPherson expedition of 1911–1912, 70 mi (110 km) north of "Camp IV" in 1911.

[7] In 1975, Donald McGillivray raised the variety to species status as Dodonaea coriacea in the journal Telopea.

[10] Dodonaea coriacea grows in deep red sand and on quartzite and laterite hills in grassland or open woodland from the Hamersley Range in western Australia, through the central Northern Territory to near the Mount Isa and Quilpie areas of western Queensland.