Compact shrub to about 1 m tall with purplish branchlets. Leaves spreading, 2.5-4 cm long, 1-1.2 cm wide, oblong to oblanceolate, dark green, leathery. Flower clusters 4-5 cm long, occasionally branched. Flowers purplish with white tube, eventually fading to white.

A hybrid, H. diosmifolia × H. speciosa, raised in New Zealand pre-1957.