It is a low shrub with rigid, linear or lance-shaped leaves, and heads of woolly-hairy flowers.

Spyridium phylicoides is a low shrub with rigid, linear to lance-shaped leaves 5–14 mm (0.20–0.55 in) long and 1–3 mm (0.039–0.118 in) wide with the edges rolled under.

Flowering occurs from September to December and the fruit is an oval to more or less spherical capsule 2–3 mm (0.079–0.118 in) long.

[2] This species was first formally described in 1858 by Siegfried Reissek in the journal Linnaea from specimens collected by Johann Wilhelmi, near Lake Hamilton in 1855.

[5] Spyridium phylicoides occurs in the Nullarbor, Eyre Peninsula, Murray, Yorke Peninsula, Southern Lofty, Kangaroo Island and South Eastern botanical regions of south-eastern South Australia.