Pritchardia viscosa is a small palm species that grows between 3 and 8 meters tall. Its unbranched trunk ranges from 20 to 45 cm in diameter. The leaves are simple and spirally arranged, forming a spherical crown typically consisting of up to twenty-five ascending, spreading, or drooping leaves. The leaf blades are 122 cm long and equally as wide, remaining flat and shallowly divided to about one-third into as many as sixty stiff-tipped segments. The upper surfaces are glossy green, while the lower surfaces are silvery gray and appressed lepidote. The veins are parallel. The petioles are densely appressed lepidote on both surfaces and can grow up to 91 cm long. Stipules are absent. The flowers are arranged in inflorescences that are about equal in length to or shorter than the petiole, consisting of 1 to 3 (sometimes up to 5) panicles on each peduncle. The panicles are approximately 15–20 cm long and loosely branched. The rachillae are viscous, densely covered with pinkish-brown hairs and a silvery grayish-white waxy substance when fresh, becoming sinuous between the distichously arranged, viscous flowers. The prophyll and peduncular bracts are soft, lax, and densely tan-woolly. The flowers are bisexual (perfect) and sessile. The calyx and corolla are thickly viscous, appearing varnished before and after exposure from the sheathing primary bracts. The corolla consists of three petals that are basally adnate to the staminal filament tube, about the height of the calyx. The petals are valvate in bud, caducous as the flower expands, prominently pocketed and furrowed within, and prominently nerved when dry. There are six stamens, with flattened, thick filaments basally connate into a tube equaling or exceeding the calyx and surrounding the carpels. The anthers are dorsifixed, spreading-erect to versatile at anthesis, oblong in outline, bifid basally nearly to the insertion point, and emarginate at the apex. The ovary is superior, with three carpels, though usually only one matures, and they are coherent only at the base. Each carpel contains a single anatropous, erect ovule attached at the base of the placenta. The broad-based styles are connate above into a trigonous column tapering to a shallowly trifid stigma. The fruit (pictured) is ellipsoid to pyriform, reaching up to 4 cm long and approximately 2.5 cm wide. The seeds are distinct from the endocarp (pictured) except at the hilum, appearing shiny. The endosperm is homogeneous except for a shallow invagination of the seed coat below the raphe, and the embryo is lateral near the base opposite the raphe. It is found in open wet forests between 500-700 meters.