This species is characterized by its elliptic, stiff-textured, shiny leaves with the secondary veins weakly looping to interconnect or reticulating near the margins, short triangular stipules with small or no developed aristas, axillary and terminal cymose inflorescences with developed peduncles and pedicels, short truncate calyx limbs, tubular white corollas with tubes 11-17 mm long and lobes 3-6 mm long, and subglobose to oblate fruits 8-12 mm in diameter. The leaves are sometimes bulliform. Their higher-order venation is closely reticulated, and on dried specimens is prominulous and similar in color to the lamina on the upper surface and plane to prominulous but usually whitened on the the lower sruface. The inflorescences are as often axillary as terminal, and their peduncles are usually articulated near the base. The inflorescence axes are often verticillate. The corolla lobes are thickly fleshy and densely papillose on their interiors. Specimens of Faramea juruana characteristically gray or flushed with a little yellow. Some plants of this species have a distinctive infection of some sort in the flowers, which produces malformed, enlarged, leathery corollas with short lobes that do not open (e.g., Obermüller et. at 398).

Faramea torquata is morphologically variable locally and also across its range. It is circumscribed broadly here, and further study may find more than one species is included but that cannot be evaluated from the material available. Plants from Venezuela, Colombia, and the Guianas have narrowly elliptic to elliptic-oblong or obovate leaves with the higher-order venation regularly reticulated and well marked on the lower surface. The leaves vary markedly in size, with much of this variation found in the type collection of Faramea torquata. Most of the plants have lax inflorescences (e.g., type of Faramea torquata, type of Coussarea scalaris, Dávila et al. 5797, Freitas et al. 84). Occasional plants from this region are distinctive in their short congested inflorescences (e.g., Uhl 464, Cortés & Kintson 30, but the inflorescences overall vary in size and degree of developement of the axes and these plants are not currently separable. Plants from the western Amazon basin, in particular in Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Acre in Brazil are distinctive in their elliptic to obovate, usually proportionally shorter leaves with rounded margins and the higher order venation plane and not well marked on the lower sruface (e.g., Palacios 3098, Kayap 2003). The type of Coussarea urophylla agrees with this form. Plants with this "western" form are found in the same areas as some plants that match the type, and the flowers and fruits appear to be similar across the Amazon basin so this form cannot be fully separated.

The name Faramea torquata may need lectotypification. The name Faramea rectinervia was synonymized by Taylor (various checklists) with Faramea torquata, but the identity of Faramea juruana is now clearer and Faramea rectinervia is a synonym of this other species. The type of the name Faramea pachydictyon is a plant with diseased enlarged flowers. Faramea paludicola is known only from the type specimen, which is in young bud. Steyermark separated this based on its supposedly well developed marginal vein; it is not clear which structure he referred to, but the leaf margins of this specimen are narrowly revolute, as in most specimens of Faramea torquata rather than thickened and the looping submarginal vein does not seem more strongly developed than on other plants of this species. These leaves dried dark brown and lack the whitened venation seem on most specimens of Faramea torquata, and that may be the feature that suggested to Steyermark this plant is different but it cannot now be separated from Faramea toquata.

Faramea torquata is similar to Faramea jurana, which has thicker-textured leaves with the higher-order venation smooth and hardly visible. Faramea torquata is also similar to Faramea subsessilis, with subsessile leaves that are rounded to cordulate at the base and mostly terminal inflorescences with longer peduncles and axes.