Cyrtandra cordifolia is a shrub that can grow 1–7 meters tall with branched, rounded to angular stems that are pubescent with multicellular hairs or sometimes become smooth (glabrate). It has simple, opposite leaves that are very broadly cordate, 15–45 cm long, and 11–22 cm wide, carried on the stem’s upper 3–5 nodes. The leaves have acuminate to acute apices, moderately hirtellous upper surfaces, and densely velvety pilose lower surfaces with yellowish-brown hairs, with the blades being chartaceous (paper-like) and coarsely dentate to occasionally denticulate or serrate–dentate along the margins. The petioles are 5–20 cm long. The flowers occur in open, compound, umbelliform cymes arising from the leaf axils, with the whole structure densely covered in shaggy villous hairs. The peduncles are stout, 25–65 mm long, with pedicels 4–25 mm long that elongate in fruit. The calyx is nearly actinomorphic (radially symmetric), whitish to green, broadly campanulate, 6–20(–30) mm long, with deltate to ovate lobes. The corolla is typically bilabiate and white, with a 13–18 mm long cylindrical tube, densely villous, featuring a 2-lobed upper lip and a 3-lobed lower lip. The stamens are five in number, with two fertile and the others staminodial; the fertile anthers are positioned in the throat of the corolla tube. The fruit is a white, ovoid, fleshy or firm berry, 1–2.5 cm long, densely villous, often with a persistent stylar beak. The seeds are numerous, ellipsoid, minute (0.4–0.5 mm long), and have a reticulate surface. It is found in moist, shaded gulch bottoms and on slopes in disturbed mesic valleys between 270-460 meters but has been found as low as 120 meters and up to 580 meters.