Heliotropium curassavicum is a glabrous and usually glaucous perennial herb. The stems are prostrate or decumbent, succulent, and range from 10–45 cm long. The leaves are simple and usually alternate, with oblanceolate blades 2–4(–5) cm long and 0.3–0.6(–0.9) cm wide. The leaf apex is obtuse, and the base is attenuate. The blades are thick and juicy, with margins that are usually entire. Leaves may be petiolate or sessile, and stipules are absent. The flowers are arranged in terminal and lateral, single or paired, bractless, scorpioid cymes 2–5(–10) cm long, with peduncles ranging from 0.5–2(–5) cm long. The flowers are bisexual (perfect), actinomorphic (radially symmetric), or occasionally slightly irregular. The calyx is divided almost to the base, with subequal, fleshy, lanceolate, or oblong lobes 1–2 mm long. The sepals are distinct or connate at the base, sometimes above the middle. The corolla is white with a greenish or yellowish center, funnelform, and 1.2–4 mm long, with (4)5(6) lobes. The tube often has scales at the summit opposite the lobes, formed by the invagination of the corolla tube. The lobes are imbricate or convolute, rarely valvate. The stamens number (4)5(6) are inserted on the corolla tube and are not exserted. The ovary is superior, 4-celled, entire, rounded, or 2–4-lobed, with usually four ovules (2 per carpel), eventually 1 per cell, sometimes fewer by abortion, anatropous, erect, ascending, or nearly horizontal, rarely pendulous. The style is simple, terminal, and seated in the pericarp, with a stigma that has a fertile discoid base and a sterile, apical, often forked appendage. The fruit is dry, lobed, or unlobed, breaking into nutlets. There are four nutlets, each 1-seeded, ovoid, and 1.5–2 mm long. The nutlets are smooth or faintly rugulose on the back and covered with a thick exocarp that functions as a floating organ for water dispersal. Seeds number 1–4, with endosperm either absent or, if present, fleshy and scanty. It occurs in wet or dry sites in coastal areas at 0–50 meters.