This species is characterized by medium-sized, often obovate leaves, several-flowered pedunculate inflorescences with regularly developed bracts, medium-sized flowers, and medium-sized fruits. The bracts are distinctive, but often deciduous. Guettarda foliacea is similar to Guettarda macrosperma, which it replaces to the south of its range and in more humid vegetation, and which lacks the distinctive bracts.
Guettarda foliacea is also generally similar to Guettarda elliptica when in flower, and also to Guettarda macrosperma. A few plants from northwestern Costa Rica have leaves and inflorescences that lack bracts like Guettarda macrosperma, but the smaller hypanthia and more delicate-seeming and slender corollas of Guettarda foliacea, and may represent hybrids (e.g., Hammel & Pérez 23963).