Gorteria diffusa is a highly variable, small annual herbaceous plant or rarely a shrublet that is assigned to the daisy family (Compositae or Asteraceae).

Like in almost all Asteraceae, the individual flowers are 5-merous, small and clustered in typical heads, and are surrounded by an involucre, consisting of in this case several whorls of bracts, which are merged at their base.

Gorteria diffusa is initially erect, but quickly develops into a creeping annual of 2–20 cm (0.79–7.87 in) high that may sometimes survive and change into a shrublet.

They are widest below midlength, mostly entire, but sometimes pinnately incised, with many stiff hairs on the upper surface, and the margins curled downward.

The eighteen to thirty-two green or reddish bracts have red or blackish tips and together compose a pitcher-shaped involucre, which later becomes more inflated and woody.

[1] The one-seeded, indehiscent fruits (called cypselas) are about 4 mm (0.16 in) long and have an asymmetrical pear shape, flatter facing the center of the flower head, the surface hairless near its foot, but felty hairy near its tip, and without ribs, sometimes with globe-shaped glands and twisted twin hairs.

[1] Gorteria diffusa was described in 1798 by Carl Peter Thunberg, a Swedish naturalist who is sometimes referred to as "the father of South African botany".

German botanist Kurt Polycarp Joachim Sprengel reassigned the species in 1826, creating the new combination Gazania diffusa.

A DNA comparison executed by Frida Stångberg and Arne Anderberg showed that populations from the south that had previously been included in G. diffusa belong to the same taxon as Gorteria personata subsp.

[1] The species is endemic to an area between the Orange River on the border with Namibia in the north to Clanwilliam, Western Cape in the south.

In G. diffusa, it has been observed that the other cypselas germinate in later years, thus making it possible to bridge periods of drought, when seed setting may not succeed.