It is usually an erect shrub with spreading branches, lance-shaped to egg-shaped leaves with the narrower end towards the base, and yellow flowers with thirty or more stamens arranged around three glabrous carpels.

The flowers are arranged on the ends of branches or short side shoots and are sessile with two or three bracts 2.8–3.6 mm (0.11–0.14 in) long at the base.

[2][3][4] Hibbertia obtusifolia was first formally described in 1817 by Swiss botanist Augustin Pyramus de Candolle in Regni Vegetabilis Systema Naturale from specimens collected by George Caley.

[7] Hoary guinea flower is widespread and locally common in south-east Queensland, all but the far west of New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory and in mainly eastern Victoria, growing in forest and woodland.

There is a single record from Clarke Island in Bass Strait in 1892, but recent surveys have not located the species and it is presumed extinct in that state.