An evergreen shrub 2 to 3 ft, occasionally 6 to 7 ft high; young shoots furnished with spreading reddish bristles, sometimes downy also. Leaves leathery, oblong or narrowly elliptic-lanceolate, very shortly stalked, minutely toothed, tapered at both ends, the apex with a short mucro, 1 to 21⁄4 in. long, 1⁄4 to 3⁄4 in. wide, dull dark green and eventually glabrous above, downy or bristly on the midrib beneath. Inflorescenses terminal on young shoots and short axillary branchlets, forming in effect a panicle; they are noticeably bracteate, the lower bracts sterile and imbricated, the upper ones separated and each subtending a flower. Corolla broadly urn-shaped, 1⁄6 in. long, white. Calyx-lobes triangular-ovate, enlarging and becoming succulent and snow-white, enclosing the seed-vessel and forming a flattened, globose, berry-like fruit 3⁄8 to 1⁄2 in. wide.
Native of Tasmania up to 4,000 ft. Although it has survived even hardish winters at Kew and passed through mild ones uninjured, it really requires a warmer locality to do itself justice. The first Lord Wakehurst showed a charming plant from his garden in Sussex at Westminster in August 1927, and the species still grows there in the Heath Garden.
G. appressa A. W. Hill – This species is closely allied to G. hispida and takes its place on the Australian mainland, in Victoria and New South Wales. Chiefly it differs in the hairs on the stems and the midribs of the leaves being appressed, not spreading. The leaves are a trifle broader in relation to their length, elliptic-oblong to elliptic, obtuse at the apex, which is sharply contracted to an apiculate point.