The genus name Haworthia honors the British botanist Adrian Hardy Haworth (1767–1833), while the species epitheton retusa derives from Latin and refers to the "retused" leaf-shape.

[1][2][3] Plants grow as tight rosettes of thick, firm, fleshy, highly recurved/truncated leaves.

Its rosette of succulent leaves are turned back ("retuse") so as to provide a flat and level face, on the surface of the ground.

Its close relative, Haworthia turgida, inhabits the steeper, rockier, more mountainous terrain to the north.

As the two species are otherwise extremely similar, and never overlap in distribution, it is likely that H. turgida is simply the mountainous form of H.