Rhizomatous perennial; culms up to 30 cm high, erect or creeping at the base. Leaf-blades narrow, rounded at the base, up to 5 cm long and 2 mm wide, rigid, pungent, glabrous or with tubercle-based hairs, margins scabrid. Panicle spiciform, interrupted, the spikelets densely packed on rhachides distinctly spaced on one side of the main axis, up to 10 cm long, 0.5-1.5 cm wide, Spikelets 6-9-flowered, elliptic, 3-3.5 mm long, 2-2.5 mm wide. Glumes subequal, 1.25-1.5 mm long, glabrous, the lower 1-3-nerved, narrower than the upper, the upper 5-nerved; lemmas broadly elliptic, apiculate, 9-nerved, 1.7-2.5 mm long, glabrous or sparsely hairy; anthers 0.75-1 mm long.

Fl. & Fr. Per.: April-October.

Type locality: France.

Distribution: Pakistan (Baluchistan); North Africa and the Mediterranean region, through the Middle East to Central Asia, northern China and Mongolia.

A plant of damp or arid, often salt-impregnated places and waste land in cultivated areas.

While typical specimens of Aeluropus lagopoides and Aeluropus littoralis are easily distinguishable, the former with globular heads of hairy spikelets, the letter with a false spike of distant spikes of glabrous spikelets, troublesome intermediates do occur. Bor (in Rech. f., Fl. Iran. 70: 420. 1970) suggested that hybridisation may be responsible for these intermediates.