Cadaba farinosa is a 2–8 m (6.6–26.2 ft) high evergreen shrub or small tree that belongs to the caper family.

It has simple ovate leaves with entire margins, zygomorphic, spidery, greenish, yellowish, whitish or pinkish flowers, and is covered in powdery hairs or scales, particularly the younger parts.

It has a smooth, reddish brown bark, while young branches appear powdery due to scales or short spreading hairs.

After ferilisation, this develops into a powdery cylindrical capsule of 2–4 cm (0.79–1.57 in) long and about 3 mm (0.12 in) in diameter, with many seeds and slight constricted between these, which open with two valves from the base when ripe.

[1][2][3][4] C. farinosa contains aliphatic alcohols, glycosides, heteroside, nitrogenous bases, saponins, steroids and sterols, while particularly the leaves contain alkaloids.

[1] Based on a type from Yemen,[5] this species was first described by Peter Forsskål, an early Swedish explorer, orientalist and naturalist, in his Flora Aegyptiaco-Arabica, that was published in 1775, and named Cadaba farinosa.

The Swiss botanist Augustin Pyramus de Candolle described a slightly different specimen in his Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis as C. dubia in 1824.

This plant can be found in the Sahel and northern Sudanian Savanna between Mauritania and Senegal in the West, along the Red Sea, through the Arabian Peninsula, and the coast of the Indian Ocean all the way to India in the East.

In northern Nigeria pounded leaves are mixed with cereals and dried to make irregularly shaped chocolate-brown cake, which is sold on markets called farsa, balambo, baleno, tsawa (in Hausa), or tigiraganda.