Branchlets soon becoming 4-10 mm thick, red-brown to purple, becoming silvery from detaching epidermis, then grey. Leaves usually alternate on long shoots, crowded on short shoots; petioles 1-10 mm long; blades fleshy, oblanceolate-spathulate, 4-25 mm long, 1.5-6 mm wide. tips subacute to rounded. Racemes terminal on short shoots, appearing 1-sided, 1-5 cm long, densely 10-20-flowered. Corollas linear in bud, slightly swollen in the lower 1/8-1/5 th below the insertion of the stamens and near the tip over the anthers; petals pale greenish, turning yellow, vary narrowly linear spathulate, looped near the middle, 1.5-3 cm long, notably thickened only at the insertion of te filaments; filaments pink to red, thickened at the base. Berrries bright red, obovoid, about 7 mm long.
Helixanthera grows on Boswellia, Commiphora, and Lannea at 100-1000 m. It is known from regions N1-3, C2, and S2 of the Flora of Somalia and Yemen, the Ogaden region of Ethiopia, and northern Kenya.