filifolia is a mostly strongly branched and woody, largely hairless, medium-sized shrub of 60–150 cm (24–59 in) high.

These bracts are overlapping, lance-shaped, hairless, tawny to greenish in colour with the tip often tinged red.

Each head has ten to fifteen female, medium or light purple, rarely white, ray florets of about 1 cm long and 1½ mm wide.

The dry, one-seeded, indehiscent fruits called cypselae are obovate to elliptic, about 4 mm (0.16 in) long and 1½ mm (0.06 in) wide, evenly silky hairy, with a brownish scaly surface when mature, and a light ochre-coloured marginal ridge.

The relatively large floral heads have an involucre of about 10 mm in cross section, and sit at the top of the long shoots.

The succulent leaves are crowded along the stem and up to 15 mm long, often spread forward and narrowed at the base.

The fine-leaved felicia was first described by the French botanist Étienne Pierre Ventenat, who named it Aster filifolius in 1804, accompanied by a colour etching[8] in his book Jardin de la Malmaison, about the plants in the palace garden that had been designed by Empress Joséphine, Napoleon Bonaparte's first wife.

When in 1973 Jürke Grau revised the genus Felicia, he distinguished four subspecies, and all names above he regarded synonymous with subsp.

[4] In 1831, De Candolle also described Fresenia leptophylla based on a collection by Johann Franz Drège from the Cederberg.

In 1920, Kurt Dinter described a specimen collected by Fritz Schaefer in Namaland, Namibia, which he called Aster schäferi.

[4][9] In 1867 Harry Bolus described Fresenia fasciculata based on a specimen he collected in the Sneeuberge between Graaff-Reinet and Murraysburg.

Subspecies schaeferi may be found from Namibia southwards to Worcester in the west and Willowmore in the east.

Subspecies schlechteri grows in the Klein Karoo between Ceres in the west and Grahamstown in the east.

[4] In South Africa, the continued survival of all four subspecies of Felicia filifolia is considered to be of least concern because their populations are stable.