The flowers of Combretum hereroense are white, cream or yellow. They grow in dense axillary and terminal spikes of up to 6 cm in length. The spikes are sometimes branched. They may appear with the new spring foliage or just before. The flowers are faintly scented.

Even when the flower spikes appear before the leaves, they will grow where leaves of last year had dropped off, from what has been the leaf axils. When the leaves first appear, their colour is yellow-green, covered in fine downy hair, as well as issued with yellow or brown scales. Those leaves that grow at branch ends may each have two small bracts called stipules at the base (Carr, 1988; Coates Palgrave, 2002).