Plants in the genus Pomaderris are shrubs, sometimes small trees, the young stems, lower surfaces of the leaves and flower parts are covered with woolly, star-shaped and simple hairs.

The leaves are arranged alternately along the branches and are simple, with brown stipules at the base of the petiole but that are usually shed as the leaf matures.

[2][3][4][5] The genus Pomaderris was first formally described in 1805 by Jacques Labillardière in his Novae Hollandiae Plantarum Specimen.

[6] The genus name means "a covering of leather or skin" referring to the valves of the fruit.

A distinctive feature of the leaves, branches, and twigs of this genus, is that they are hairy.