[citation needed] The specific name, horsfieldii, is in honor of American naturalist Thomas Horsfield.

[1] S. horsfieldii is an olive brown to green lizard, with a white banded appearance.

The male has a crest on the back of the neck made up of a few lanceolate spines facing backwards.

The scales on the upper surface are large, rhomboidal, strongly keeled, pointing straight backwards; these are nearly always of unequal size, larger ones being scattered on the sides.

[3] The colour is pale olive above but varies from green to brown, with irregular dark-brown cross bands, often broken up by a band of light-brown colour running along the sides of the back.