It is an understorey plant with relatively large leaves, tube-shaped white flowers and red drupes.

Eumachiaia frutescens is an understorey plant that typically grows to a height of about 1–3 m (3 ft 3 in – 9 ft 10 in) with leaves about 80–200 mm (3.1–7.9 in) long and 30–60 mm (1.2–2.4 in) wide with broadly triangular stipules that persist, even when the leaves have fallen.

[2] This species was first formally described in 1942 by Cyril Tenison White who gave it the name Hodgkinsonia frutescens in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Queensland.

[5] In 2017, Laure Barrabé, Charlotte Morley Taylor and Sylvain G. Razafimandimbison transferred the species to the genus Eumachia as E. frutescens, in the journal Candollea.

[6] Turkey bush grows on Cape York Peninsula and in north-east Queensland from sea level to 800 m (2,600 ft), usually in dry rainforest.