Kadua degeneri subsp. degeneri is a prostrate, branched shrub. The stems are quadrangular, densely hirtellous, or glabrous, and the older stems have prominent exfoliating corky layers with short, congested, leafy shoots in the axils. The leaves are simple and opposite, with lanceolate to ovate or cordate blades that measure 1–3(–4) cm long and 0.3–2 cm wide. The leaf apex is acute or acuminate, and the base is attenuate or cordate. The lower surfaces are glabrous or hirtellous along the midrib, and the blades are subcoriaceous to chartaceous. The leaf margins are entire, with few strongly ascending lateral veins, and the higher-order venation is inconspicuously reticulate. The petioles are 0–0.2 cm long and connate at the base. The stipules are lanceolate with a broad base, about 2.5–2.8 mm long, and can be glabrous or hirtellous, with a somewhat fimbriate margin. The flowers are arranged in 1–10 reduced, terminal, corymbose cymes, puberulent in the lower part, with cordate to lanceolate bracts 10–15 mm long. The hypanthium is turbinate and 1.5–2 mm long. The flowers are bisexual (perfect), pistillate, and insect-pollinated. The calyx lobes are foliaceous, broadly lanceolate, 4–8 mm long, and 1.5–3.5 mm wide, enlarging somewhat in fruit. The corolla’s color is unknown, but it is fleshy, glaucous, and salverform, with a 6–7 mm long tube. The limb is not quadrangular in bud but has a depressed apex, with lobes about 3–4 mm long at anthesis strongly inflexed in bud. A nectary disk is present. The stamens are as many and alternate with the corolla lobes, inserted just below the mouth of the corolla tube. The anthers are sessile or on short filaments, apparently dehiscing prior to anthesis, dithecal, and open by longitudinal slits. The ovary is inferior or partly so, 2(-4)-locular, with few to numerous ovules on fleshy placentas near the middle of the septum. The styles are as many as the carpels, cylindrical to filiform, terminal, slender, and densely long-woolly toward the base, with a 2-lobed apex. The stigma is bilobed or subcapitate, included or exserted. The fruit is a subglobose capsule, up to 3 mm long and 4–5 mm in diameter, dehiscing loculicidally across the disk and then about halfway to the base. The pyrenes separate very tardily septicidally, with a somewhat sclerified endocarp and a raised disk. The seeds are nearly black, angled, pitted, and have well-developed oily endosperm, though the endosperm can occasionally be scanty or absent. It is found in mesic forests between 1,200-1,220 meters.