Plants herbs or subshrubs up to 60 cm tall, more or less densely pubescent with closely appressed 2-branched hairs. Leaves with a goat-like smell, sessile or with petioles up to 2 cm long; blades  linear-lanceolate to narrowly ovate or elliptic, 1-8 cm long. 0.1-3.5 cm wide, bases cuneate to attenuate, margins sometimes undulate, tips acute to obtuse. Inflorescences of branched cymes, branches elongating up to 10-15 cm long in fruit. Flowers ebracteate, sessile; calyces appressed pubescent, lobes 1-1.5 mm long, 0.2-0.8 mm wide; corollas white to cream, sometimes with yellowish centres, tubes 2.5-6 mm long, usually with appressed hairs, lobes 0.5-3 mm long, 1-.25 mm wide, more or less pubsecent outside; styles 0.7-1.5 mm long, stigmatic heads conical-oblong, 0.7-1.5 mm long, shortly 2-4-fid at the tip. Nutlets 2-4, 2-3 mm long, margins often more or less winged, other surfaces rugos to spinate.

Heliotropium longiflorum grows in semidesert grasland, deciduous to evergreen bushlands an on dunes at 5-1500 m in all regions used in the Flora of Somalia and in Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and the Arabian peninsula. Plants from Somaliland and Somalia ahave narrow leaves and belong to Heliotropiium longforum var. stenophyllum Schwartz.

©Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; reproduced with permission.

Global distribution of Heliotropium longiflorum.

Note: GBIF records include introduced and cultivated plants. Consequently, the distribution shown often differs from statements about a taxon's native distribution.