This species is characterized by its shrub or tree habit; dense lanose pubescence on the stems, leaves, and inflorescences; lanceolate to ovate, chartaceous to subcoriaceous, petiolate leaves with the blades bullulate or rugulose; obtuse to rounded calyx lobes, weakly funnelform corollas with tubes 4-11 mm long, and fruits with 4 locules. The corollas are densely lanose on the outside and pubescent in the tube, and vary from white to pink, red, or purplish red (including the flowers of Ecuadorian plants, although Ståhl, 1999: 74, described these only as white). The leaf blades are generally bullulate throughout the upper surface but sometimes this form is found only near the margins. In any given region the plants show rather broad variation in leaf size, and flowers that are variously congested to widely spaced along the primary axis. The flowers are variously borne directly from the primary axis or on short to developed secondary axes.

This species is widely distributed and morphologically somewhat variable, and some of this variation appears to have a geographic pattern; this species may deserve further study as to whether these plants all comprise one species. Plants from most of Peru, including the area where the type of Gonzalagunia dependens was collected, are relatively robust for the species. In particular these Peruvian plants have relatively larger leaves for this species, and the corollas have relatively large tubes 7-11 mm long. In the rest of its range Gonzalagunia dependens has shorter corollas: to the south, from southernmost Peru through Bolivia, the corolla tubes are 5-6 mm long; to the north, the corolla tubes are 4-7 mm long in Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela. Fruit color also varies within the species, and appears to have more geographic pattern. Plants from Peru and Bolivia have dark purple to black fruits, and the species appears to lack a white fruit form in this region. Plants from Ecuador have the fruits variously white or flushed with pink or purple. Plants from Colombia and Venezuela have fruits that are consistently described as white or grayish white.

Gonzalagunia dependens is quite similar to Guettarda tournefortiopsis, which however has axillary inflorescences with cincinnate axes with the flowers borne individually not in groups, funnelform corollas, and fruits with a single multilocular pyrene with one seed in each locule. The characteristic white-lanose leaf undersides of Gonzalagunia dependens are also found in Gonzalagunia killipii, which has strigose pubescence on the stems and inflorescence axes and a range down to lower elevations. Gonzalagunia sororia is found in the same region as Gonzalagunia dependens and also has bullulate or rugulose leaf blades, but Gonzalagunia sororia lacks lanose pubescence on the lower leaf surfaces.