It has diamond to spoon shaped leaves, sometimes coated with a fine white powder, and in May through July, bright red, orange or yellow flowers adorn the short inflorescence.

[5] The plant has diamond to spoon shaped leaves, with a height of 5 to 15 cm, and reddish-orange or yellow flowers.

The holotype was collected by H. M. Hall in the San Bernardino Mountains, with the taxon originally described as Dudleya pumila by Nathaniel Lord Britton and Joseph Nelson Rose during their revision of North American Crassulaceae.

In 1902, Hermann E. Hasse collected a plant growing on the rocky banks of San Gabriel Canyon at 600 to 700 m in altitude.

[10] The majority of Dudleya cymosa plants in Southern California were thereafter assigned to this subspecies.

[8] Research by botanist Kei M. Nakai showed that the type specimen of Dudleya minor, along with plants at the type locality, in the lower altitudes of San Gabriel Canyon, were in fact representative of Dudleya lanceolata, on the basis of morphology and chromosome count.

The species Dudleya lanceolata and Dudleya cymosa can be separated on the basis that lanceolata is tetraploid and occurs at lower elevations, while cymosa is diploid and occurs at higher elevations.

[8] A phylogenetic analysis in 2013 did not provide any major revelations for the position of this subspecies, placing it as unresolved but emerging from a large polytomy at the base of the generic tree.

[8] It is also found on Santiago Peak in the Santa Ana Mountains of western Riverside and Orange County.

The subgenus Dudleya consists of broad-leaved rosette-forming plants with connate petals adapted to hummingbird pollinators.

Subgenera Stylophyllum and Hasseanthus have broad, open flowers, with Stylophyllum consisting of evergreen plants with pencil-shaped leaves, and Hasseanthus consisting of deciduous, geophytic plants.

This species in particular has chromosomal resemblance to the Hasseanthus clade, which appears to place it as a primitive member of the subgenus Dudleya.

[11] The Hasseanthus species may not be "primitive" and in fact may represent a derived subgroup with plesiomorphic features,[14] Reid Moran and Shields had noted the taxonomic difficulties and the failure of the subgenus Dudleya to be easily differentiated.