The greater broomrape can grow to a height of 3 ft (1 m) with a honey-brown downy stem, persisting as a dark brown dead spike after flowering.

The fruits are egg-shaped and enclosed in the dead flowerhead, and the seeds are minute.

[2] The greater broomrape is a parasitic plant, growing on the roots of leguminous shrubs, and is to be found only where its host plants are found; these are usually European gorse or common broom, but occasionally it grows on dyer's greenweed.

[3] It has a suboceanic, southern-temperate distribution,[3] in Western Europe and North Africa; in France, the Netherlands and Belgium it is widespread, but in Germany it occurs mainly in the west, and in Switzerland in montane and sub-alpine settings.

[3] It grows in the Great Casterton Road Banks, an SSSI in Lincolnshire.