Plants shrubs or trees up to 7 m tall; stems glabrous. Leaves clustered on old branches, simple, glabrous, shortly peiolate; petioles on clustered leaves to 1 mm long, on solitary leaves to 2 mm long; blades up to 10 mm long and 4 mm wide, oblanceolate to obovate, midribs scarcely visible. Flowers solitary or 2-4 together in the axils of clustered leaves; pedicels 1-5 mm long; hypanthia narrowly cylindrical, 3-5(-7) mm long in fruit; sepals (3-)4, 5-6 mm long; petals absent; stamens about 20; androgynophores exceeding the hypanthia byt 1-2(-3) mm; gynophores 5-10 mm long, becoming curved; ovaries cylindrical, about 4 mm long. Fruits cylindrical, up to 3 cm long and 0,4 cm wide, torulose, glabrous, with several seeds.
Maerua sessiliflora grows in Acacia-Commiphora bushlands and semi-desert open-scrub at 150-1340 m, It is known from regions N1-N3, C2, and S1 of the Flora of Somalia plus Ethiopoa and Kenya.