It grows in a tight rosette approximately 5 to 7 cm in diameter with 20 to 30 green to red leaves that are arranged in concentric layers.

It grows in deep silica sands in open woodland or coastal heathland and only flowers after a bush fire, which is speculated to be caused by the release of ethylene.

[3] It was first seen flowering in 1954,[4][7] 106 years after it was formally described in 1848 by Jules Émile Planchon in Annales des Sciences Naturelles 9:303,1848.

George Bentham in 1864 questioned the species status of D. zonaria and suggested that the Drummond specimens might actually be examples of D. rosulata.

[7] By the time Rica Erickson wrote her 1968 book Plants of Prey in Australia, no other flowering specimen of D. zonaria had been found.