It has thin, fibrous bark, egg-shaped leaves, small white flowers and woody fruit.

Flowering occurs from July to October and the fruit is a woody capsule 4–5 mm (0.16–0.20 in) in diameter with the remains of the sepals attached.

[2][3][4] This species was first formally described in 1844 by Johannes Conrad Schauer who gave it the name Leptospermum erubescens in Lehmann's Plantae Preissianae.

[5][6] In 2023, Peter Gordon Wilson transferred the species to the genus Leptospermopsis as L. erubescens in the journal Taxon.

[8] The roadside tea-tree grows on road verges, plains, in gullies and among rocky outcrops in heath and woodland.