This species is has a rather slender to somewhat robust glabrescent habit, oblanceolate leaves, sessile subcapitate to very shortly cymose inflorescences, flowers that are subsessile or with pedicels to 2 mm long, narrowly triangular calyx lobes 1-3 mm long, yellow corollas with the tubes 5-8 mm long and the lobes equal in length to the tube, and subglobose fruits 3-4 mm in diameter that are black or purple-black at maturity. Hoffmannia calycosa has been included by recent authors in a broadly circumscribed Hoffmannia psychotriifolia, but it separated here. In particular these differ markedly in fruit form and color. Most of the names that have been synonymized with Hoffmannia psychotriifolia actually are synonyms of Hoffmannia calycosa.

Hoffmannia psychotriifolia as circumscribed here has oblanceolate, lanceolate, or elliptic leaves, fasciculate or umbelliform inflorescences with the flowers and fruits on pedicels 2-5 mm long, white to yellow, corollas with tubes 4-8 mm long and the lobes about as long as the tube, and narrowly ellipsoid young fruits ca. 6 x 3 mm that are red at maturity. Hoffmannia calycosa is similar to Hoffmannia wilsonii.