Pritchardia minor is a medium-sized palm reaching heights of ~6–12 meters. Its slender trunk measures approximately 10 cm in diameter. The simple, spirally arranged leaves form a crown of fifteen to twenty ascending, spreading, or sometimes drooping fronds. The lower leaf surfaces are densely covered with a soft, yellowish-gray or nearly golden tomentum composed of not very appressed, yet much-fringed scales. The leaf veins are parallel, and the leaves are petiolate, with stipules absent. The flowers are arranged in large panicles arising from a short peduncular part. The rachillae are villous, while the panicle rachis and all inflorescence rachises are covered in soft, rufous wool that partially sheds with age. The prophyll and peduncular bracts are typically lepidote, tubular at the base, and expand into a long-acuminate, rigid-chartaceous blade copiously covered in soft, rufous wool. The flowers are bisexual (perfect) and sessile. The calyx is cupular, shallowly three-lobed, and prominently nerved or smooth when dry. The corolla consists of three petals, which are basally adnate to the staminal filament tube up to the height of the calyx. The distinct petal lobes are valvate in bud, caducous as the flower expands, prominently pocketed and furrowed within, and prominently nerved when dry. The six stamens have flattened, thickish filaments that are connate at the base into a tube equaling or exceeding the calyx, surrounding the carpels, and then separating into abruptly subulate structures that do not inflex at the apex. The anthers are erect in bud, dorsifixed, and spread-erect to versatile at anthesis, oblong in outline, bifid at the base nearly to the insertion point, and emarginate at the apex, with a narrow connective. The anther sacs dehisce laterally and longitudinally. The superior ovary consists of three carpels, with only one typically maturing. The carpels are basally coherent, and each contains a single ovule. The broad-based styles are connate above into a trigonous column that tapers into a shallowly trifid stigma. The ovules are anatropous, erect, and attached at the base of the placenta. The fruit is an ovoid–ellipsoid or obovoid drupe, measuring 10–20 mm long and 12–13 mm wide. The seeds are distinct from the endocarp except at the hilum, shiny, and feature a homogeneous endosperm with a shallow invagination of the seed coat below the raphe. The embryo is lateral near the base, opposite the raphe. It is found in mesic to wet forests between 760-1,220 meters.