It is a shrub with many stems at the base, ascending, lance-shaped, hairy, sharply-pointed leaves, pink, tube-shaped flowers and fleshy, spherical, reddish-purple drupes.

The flowers are arranged singly in leaf axils, with nine to eleven strongly overlapping green and pinkish bracts up to 4.2–4.9 mm (0.17–0.19 in) long.

[3][2][4] Melichrus hirsutus was first formally described in 2020 by Helen T. Kennedy and Ian Telford in the journal Telopea from an unpublished description by John Beaumont Williams.

[3][5] The specific epithet (hirsutus) means covered with fairly coarse and stiff, long, erect, or ascending straight hairs.

[3][6] This species of Melichrus grows in forest on poor, sandy soils, in three nature reserves, north of Glenreagh in eastern New South Wales.