It is a spreading to prostrate shrub with holly-like leaves with sharply-pointed triangular to egg-shaped teeth or lobes, and clusters of green to cream-coloured and mauve flowers with a pink to red style.

[3][4][5][6] This species was first formally described in 1810 by Scottish botanist Robert Brown who gave it the name Anadenia ilicifolia in the Transactions of the Linnean Society of London.

[7][8] In 1830, Brown changed the name to Grevillea ilicifolia in his Supplementum primum prodromi florae Novae Hollandiae.

[11] In 2004, Trisha L. Downing described two subspecies of G. ilicifolia in Australian Systematic Botany and the names are accepted by the Australian Plant Census: Grevillea ilicifolia grows in mallee, heath or shrubland in south-eastern South Australia, including the Eyre Peninsula and Kangaroo Island, in western inland Victoria, and near Griffith in western New South Wales.

It is rare in New South Wales, where subspecies ilicifolia is listed as Critically Endangered under the Biodiversity Conservation Act 2016.