This plant is characterized by a unique, conspicuous bladder embellished with red to purple veins that surround the fruit.

This sprawling to spreading shrub or subshrub is characterized by its conspicuous and colorful sac-like bracts that aid in dispersal of the achene.

[2] The inflorescences have flowers borne in axillary clusters, or on perfect[Note 1] or female plants, on short, stout peduncles.

This highly modified bract is a sac or bladder-like structure that enlarges with development of the flower, colored hyaline and textured with deep red to red-purple veins, and lacking hairs.

[2] Ira Loren Wiggins only accounted for H. macroptera in his flora of the Sonoran Desert, citing Pterostegia galioides as a synonym and disposing of H. fruticosa due to his exclusion of Cedros Island endemics.

James L. Reveal took into account the three distinct entities Greene had described (galioides, fruticosa and macroptera), and opted to place them as varieties within a monospecific genus.

His basis for separation was the fact that the varieties were primarily allopatric, only overlapping in one small area in northwestern Baja California Sur.

They are: The characteristic bladder or sac-like structure that surrounds the achene originally starts as a tiny immature bract subtending the pedicel.