Dubautia raillardioides is a lax, decumbent shrub growing up to 3 meters tall. The stems are herbaceous, usually somewhat thick and fleshy above, becoming soft woody below, and glabrous except for a conspicuous fringe of trichomes on the upper border of the confluent leaf scars. The leaves are simple and ternate, lanceolate to oblong-oblanceolate, measuring 9-25 cm long and 1-3.5 cm wide, with 9-15 nerves. They are completely glabrous or glabrate, with toothed margins from the apex to usually less than halfway to the base, eciliate, with an acuminate apex and an attenuate base. The flowers are numerous, found in decompound, somewhat lax, corymbose inflorescences 10-20 cm long and 10-30 cm wide. The lower peduncles are glabrous or puberulent, usually sparsely glandular, while the upper and ultimate peduncles are puberulent and densely covered with coarse, often purplish, short-stalked glands. The ultimate peduncles are usually 4-20 mm long. The receptacle is short-conical, with a false involucre consisting of a single series of 5-10 usually peripheral, rather strongly connate (often separating on drying) receptacular bracts 5-9 mm long, usually purplish, glabrous, and often glandular. Some heads have 1-2 reduced bracts partly adnate to the inner face of the cup or, more rarely, isolated amid florets on the inner part of the disk. There are 8-20 florets per head, with white corollas 3-4.5 mm long, glabrous, and eglandular. The pappus consists of 14-19 very narrowly linear-lanceolate, short-fimbriate scales 3-4.5 mm long. The fruit is a 4-5.5 mm long achene, glabrous to sparsely strigillose. It occurs in wet forest habitats at the margins of bogs between 600-1,375 meters.