Up to seven stems of 9–15 cm (3.5–5.9 in) long grow from a short thickened trunk, spread horizontally at their base but have rising tips.

Each flower cluster is subtended by a fan-shaped to broadly oval-oblong, hairy bract, that carries glands and is eventually shed.

Its outer surface is covered in spreading, white 1.5–2 mm (0.059–0.079 in) long hairs and many small glands, but hairless on the inside.

The keel envelops a hollow, open tube of about 8 mm (0.31 in) long, made up of nine merged filaments and one free stamen.

At the tip, the ovary extends into a sparsely hairy, forward sloping style that strongly widens at the place where it curves upwards 2.5–2.8 mm (0.098–0.110 in) from its end.

O. dreweae and O. thomii are clump-forming subshrubs that are densely set with leaves and have distinctly ridged herbaceous stems without dot-like glands, and pale to reddish purple flowers (not open, sparsely leaved woody subshrubs, with branches covered in warts or dots but without ridges, and white flowers with a purple keel tip).

[2] As far as known, this species was first noticed in 1951 by South African botanist and profuse plant collector Elsie Elizabeth Esterhuysen.

[4] Otholobium lanceolatum is considered to be a critically endangered species because it has only been found in one location, in the foothills north of Shaw's Mountain, near Caledon in the Western Cape province of South Africa, which is a municipal commonage.

Currently, its habitat is under threat due to livestock grazing and competition by invasive plants such as Eucalyptus, Hakea and Acacia species, and may ultimately be destroyed by possible future housing or agricultural development.

[2][1] The species is found in the border zone between eroded sandstone and shale on somewhat semi-dry, clayey but primarily stony slopes at an altitude of 100–200 m (330–660 ft).