The leaves are arranged in opposite pairs and pinnate, those of juvenile plants 20–80 mm (0.79–3.15 in) long with eight to seventeen wavy-edged leaflets.

The flowers are pendent, tubular or funnel-shaped, each on a pedicel 2–8 mm (0.079–0.315 in) long and white to cream-coloured with purple markings.

[2][3][6] Wonga wonga vine was first formally described in 1800 by English botanist Henry Cranke Andrews who gave it the name Bignonia pandorana in The Botanist's Repository for New, and Rare Plants from specimens grown in London by Lee and Kennedy from seed collected on Norfolk Island by Colonel Paterson.

[7][8] In 1928 Cornelis Gijsbert Gerrit Jan van Steenis gave the species its present name.

The highly flexible wood of Pandorea pandorana was the most sought-after for use in woomera-cast spears among the people of the Central and Western Deserts.

[16] Due to its cultural significance, a group of mythological women with slender and flexible bodies were named after it.

[17] Pandorea pandorana was first raised in England in 1793 by Lee and Kennedy at their nursery in Hammersmith[9] and had flowered in cultivation by 1805.

[19] Several different coloured cultivars are available, including: Judith Wright had her poem, "Wonga vine" published in The Bulletin on 22 December 1948.