Plants perennial herbs or dwarf shrubs, sometimes flowering in their first year, all parts glabrous; stems to 45 cm takk,slender, often trailing. Leaves: stipules suborbicular, moreor less auriculate, dark brown with paler subfimbriate margins; leaf-blades narrowly elliptic to oblanceolate, (6-)10-17.5 mm long, (2-)4-6 mm, bases cuneate or attenuate into petioles up to 5 mm long in juvenile plants, much shorter in older plants. Flowers in most axils, staminate and pistillate together or not; staminate flowers pedicellate; pedicels up to 1.5 mm long; sepals elliptic, about 1.4 mm long and 0.7 mm wide; petals linear-lanceolate, about 3/4 as ong as the sepals; disc glands circular; androgynophores present; pistillodes minute; pistillate flowers on pedicels uo to 5-8 mm long; sepals elliptic, up to 2-3.5 mm long, 1.6-2.2 mm wide in fruit; petals more or less subulate, slightly longer than the disc glands, oten absent; disc glands thin, whitish, truncate or emarginate, often apparently 3-toothed because of the petal almost hidden under them; styles bifid to the base. Capsules about 3.5 mm in diameter, with slightly raised veins; seeeds 3-sided, angles slightly rounded, about 1-1.1 mm long, slightly pustulate when submature, almost smooth, dark brown when mature.
Andrachne somalensis grows on limestone cliffs or screes in areas at last formerly with evergreen forest, rarely on gypsum, at 700-2100 m. It is known only from regions N1-3 of the Flora of Somalia.