It grows in a rosette 3 to 5 cm in diameter with green, orange-yellow, or red leaves.
It grows in a variety of soils from sand to laterite gravel and limestone clay in mallee woodland, heathland, and open forests.
[1] It was perhaps first illustrated by Ferdinand von Mueller in 1879, which he identified as Drosera whitackeri [sic], though Allen Lowrie and John Godfrey Conran note that this could represent artistic license and may not have been drawn from an actual specimen.
Lowrie and Sherwin Carlquist first formally described this taxon in 1992 as a subspecies of Drosera whittakeri.
Lowrie and Conran reviewed the specimens of D. whittakeri in 2008 and elevated subsp.