Stems: four to twelve inches high. Leaves: none. Flowers: calyx short with two setaceous bractlets at base, irregular, the teeth subulate from a broad base, corolla ventricon, upper lip erect. Fruit: capsule globose, seeds light-coloured, with a spongy coat.

Boschniakia is a parasitic herb, and has stout, thick, purplish-brown clustered stems, the dense scales being much imbricated. It flowers from near the ground in cone-like spikes, and the bilabiate corolla has an entire upper lip, its margins involute, and a naked two-lobed lower lip, the stamens being densely woolly at the base. Its common host plants are Gaultheria and Arctostaphylos.