It is a slender shrub with hairy stems, narrowly egg-shaped to linear leaves , and small clusters of cream-coloured to yellow flowers.

Pomaderris phylicifolia is a slender shrub that typically grows to a height of 1–2.5 m (3 ft 3 in – 8 ft 2 in), its branchlets covered with shaggy simple and star-shaped hairs.

The petal-like sepals are 1.2–2.0 mm (0.047–0.079 in) long but soon fall off, and there are no petals.

[2][3][4] Pomaderris phylicifolia was first formally described in 1821 by Johann Heinrich Friedrich Link in his book Enumeratio Plantarum Horti Regii Berolinensis Altera from an unpublished description by the Loddiges family.

[5][6] In 1997, Neville Grant Walsh and Fiona Coates described two subspecies of P. phylicifolia and the names are accepted by the Australian Plant Census: Both subspecies of narrow-leaf pomaderris are found in eastern New South Wales, eastern Victoria, and in Tasmania.