The species is a hairless herbaceous annual, growing long, thin, vine-like stems which climb on objects, including other plants, for support.

At its tip is a single flower which is bright yellow to gold in color, dotted with dark maroon, and just over a centimeter long.

[3] Neogaerrhinum filipes is native to the sandy deserts of the southwestern United States and northern Mexico.

[5] A research study was completed in 2009 by the Journal of Arid Environments which compared the flowering phenology of both shrubs and ephemerals in both urban and non-urban areas.

[9] The plant was referred to as, "a most handsome, climbing annual, with long, slender, bright green stems and leaves" by Edmund Carroll Jaeger, the author of Desert Wild Flowers which was published in 1940 by Stanford University Press.