It has thin, woody, shyly branching, upright, initially brown, later grey stems, with lance- to awl-shaped leaves crowded at their tips.

The broadly inverted egg-shaped petals are white, reddish pink or bright purple and are overlapping in a circle in the bud.

The superior ovary in the center of the flower consists of three merged carpels, that together protect three cavities within which are one to four anatropous ovules each of which is covered by a single layer.

George Bentham and Joseph Dalton Hooker, two of the nineteenth century's most influential British botanists however, included it in 1867 in the Droseraceae.

[3] Like many other carnivorous plants, Roridula has a rather poorly developed root system, and grows on acidic and leached soils in humid locations.

[10] Unlike Drosera, Roridula gorgonias secretes a very sticky resinous substance, mainly containing acylglycerides and triterpenoids that are insoluble in water.

[11] Roridula does not respond by bending tentacles to struggling insects, unlike Drosera, that secrete a sticky mixture of saccharides or proteins.

Instead, each plant houses individuals of the bug Pameridea roridulae, which quickly close in on the trapped insects and feed on them.

[13] Pameridea was shown to have a thick greasy layer that prevents direct contact between the resin on Roridula tentacles and the insect's cuticle, this allows them to roam freely across the plants.

In addition, several crab spider species of the genus Synema can be found on the plant and these may both prey on the captive insects as well as on the resident bugs.

The unrelated Australian genus Byblis resembles Roridula in having sticky tentacles, which do not secrete digestive enzymes and also lives together with hemipteran bugs in much the same way.

Although Pameridea depends on insects with their high protein content that have been captured by Roridula for completing its life cycle, it can survive on plant juices.

[15] Fragments of fossil leaves, morphologically very close to extant Roridula, have been found in two pieces of amber of Eocene age (35–47 million years old), from the Yantarny mine near Kaliningrad.

The glands consist of many cells, forming a tapering stalk and a thick, hoof-shaped or egg-shaped head, with a small pore at its very tip.

Leaf shape, size and shape of the stomata and epidermal cells, the presence of non-glandular hairs, and of stalked glands that strongly differ in size on the lower leaf surface and on the margins including a terminal tentacle, as well as the head of the tentacle having an apical pore, are all characters shared with extant Roridula species.

[16] The pieces of amber with the roridulid remains were found in a deposit formed in a forested swamp on a nutrient-poor and carbonate-free soil in a coastal area, with both angiosperm and conifer trees in a warm-temperate or subtropical climate.

The presence of roridulids in the northern hemisphere during the Eocene questions the assumption that the family originated in Gondwana, about 90 million years ago.