The brilliant orange blooms of this striking tree appear throughout the south-west near Christmas time. Aboriginal people used to dig up and eat the suckers of the Christmas tree, which are sweet and taste like candy, first peeling off the outer layer. Christmas tree fruits are light, dry and winged, and float away from the parent tree.
Seedlings develop into a low, bushy shrub with numerous stems rising from the base.
After a number of years, one of these stems produces a trunk that carries the flowers. This small tree or large shrub grows up to eight metres high and has grey to brown bark. The leaves are dull green to bluish-green, somewhat thick and 40 to 100 millimetres long. The deep yellow to orange flowers are strikingly arranged in dense sprays. Each flower has six to eight petals and six to eight unequal stamens.