Microtis media are deciduous, chlorophyllous, sympodial, tuberoid terrestrial orchids with a single, tubular leaf 250–650 mm (9.8–25.6 in) long that encloses the lower one-third to half of the flowering stem.

[5][6] The specific epithet (media) is a Latin word meaning "medium",[7] referring to the intermediate floral structure.

According to Allan Cunningham it appeared from a sod of earth containing a Cephalotus, collected by Phillip Parker King from same location, and flowered to provide the source of the illustration by Franz Bauer.

The flowers too are extremely similar, and the chief difference is to be found in the lip, which is here larger in proportion to the rest of the flower, and it is singularly wedge-shaped, truncated, and obtuse, even retuse at the extremity :–the disk being moreover furnished with two oblong, warty callosities, and the margin of the lower half and apex, with several globose, tuberculated processes".

The common mignonette orchid grow in shrubland, woodland and forest, often in seasonally wet areas and on granite outcrops.