Heterolepis species are shrublets, typically sprawling and about 30 cm high with moderately large yellow flowers.

The flowerheads are solitary with glandular peduncles, the surrounding green bracts having membranous margins, especially in the inner rows.

The seeds (properly speaking the fruits) are flask-shaped, silky, with a pappus of two unequal rows of bristly, barbed scales.

The leaves are alternate, typically 15–30 mm long, narrow or needle-like, sharply pointed, thick, and quite stiff, with the margins rolled under, woolly beneath.

The plants occur mainly on rocky sandstone slopes in the mountains of the Western Cape in South Africa.