Barberetta aurea grows to up to high from a tuberous rootstock and develops about 3 leaves that are arranged like a fan, flattened sideways and so creating a left and right surface rather than an upper and lower surface. The leaves lack a leafstalk, are lance-shaped in outline, hairless, up to long and wide at midlength, narrowing gradually to the foot and the tip, and have five distinct vertical ribs and several finer ribs in between. The stem is weak, long, with some hairs towards the top, and carries its many flowers in a simple raceme, of long. The stalks of the individual flower are inclined upwards, the lower flower stalks are long. Wrapped around the foot of each flower stalk is a persistent lance-shaped
bract of up to long. The
star-symmetric perianth consists of six tepals of about long and wide, that are yolk yellow when fresh and bright orange when dry. The upper three tepals have an orange spot at their base. The
stamens are approximately long. The two upper filaments ascend and slightly diverge, while the lower filament diverges strongly in the direction opposite to the style. The filaments are yellow and carry very short, orange, elliptic anthers. The
ovary is green in colour and about in diameter and contains one ovule of approximately in diameter. The ovary is a yellow style of m long that is strongly bent sideways and carries an orange coloured stigma. The ovary develops into an initially yellow, later blackish half egg-shaped capsule of about across that contains a single orange finely papillous seed of around . The sap of this plant stains paper red.
Barberetta aurea has a base chromosome count of 15 (n=15). Small corms grow in the axils of the bracts that are responsible for vegetative reproduction. == Taxonomy ==