Plants perennial herbs or shrublets, up to 1 m tall more more; vegetative parts pubescent to tomentose with spreading, stellate, often somewhat yellowish hairs. Leaves petiolate; petioles 3-30 mm long; blades narrowly t broadly ovate, up to 30 mm long and 20 mm wide, bases more or less deeply cordate, margins dentate-serrate, tips acute to obtuse. Flowers solitary, axillary; pedicels 10-60 mm long, pubescent, articulated in the upper part; epicalyx bracts 10-13, 10-20 mm long, filiform, cilate; calyces 4-7 mm long, glabrous to puberulous, ciliate; petals 13-27 mm long, white to pale yellow. Mericarps 5-8 mm long, triangular to suborbicular in outline, with wings up to 2.5 mm wide, slightly reticulate and ubescent on the back.
Pavoniua serrata grows in Acacia-Commiphora bushland, on the northern escarpent in evergreen bushland at 350-1650 m. It is known from regions N1-3, c1-2, and S1 of the Flora of Somalia and from Djibouti, Ethiopia,Kenya, and Yemen.