Perennial, erect, suffruticose, 20-50 cm tall, diffusely branched, dull green or pinkish purple herb. Young shoots striate, greyish-pubescent. Leaves pinnately bifoliolate, petiole grooved, 5-10 mm long; leaflets oblong-cylindrical or semi-cylindrical, 5-10 mm long, fleshy, minutely hairy; stipules scarious. Flowers yellowish-white, c. 6-8 mm across; pedicel 3-5 mm long; disc urceolate with 10-lobed margin. Sepals 5, ovate, 3-4 mm long, pubescent outside, keeled, cucullate, margin membranous. Petals 5, spathulate, 5-6 mm long, with undulate and obscurely serrate margin. Stamens 10, alternately short and long, scale narrowly ovate to ovate-lanceolate, retuse to entire or lacerate at the apex. Carpels 5; ovary oblong-pyramidate, glabrescent, 5-loculed, each locule multiovulate; style short, persistent. Capsule narrowly oblong, 10-13 mm long, 3-4 mm across, pentagonal, retuse, septicidally dehiscent into 5, 3-5 seeded cocci. Seeds compressed, elliptic-ovate, rugose-tuberculate.

Fl.Per.: September June.

Type: “Environs de Tor, Sinai” Bove 171-173 (G; K).

Distribution: Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Palestine, Egypt (Sinai), Jordan, Kuweit and Saudi Arabia.

Common on carbonaceous and saline sandy loam soils in Sind and Baluchistan.

The seeds are considered anthelmintic.

This species has been mostly confused and identified with the Egyptian, Zygophyllum coccineum Linn., which has bright green glabrous shoots and distinctly long pedicelled flowers and 5-angled capsules.