It is a small herbaceous plant that naturally occurs in sea beds and other saltwater environments in the Indo-Pacific.

[2] The first description of the species was by Robert Brown as Caulinia ovalis, this was transferred to the genus Halophila by Joseph Dalton Hooker in Flora Tasmaniae (1858).

[3] The plant occurs around reefs, estuaries, islands, inter-tidal areas, on soft sand or mud substrates.

The leaves are ovate in outline, appearing on stems that emerge from rhizome beneath the sand.

A clone of Halophila ovalis known as Johnson's seagrass occurs only on the southeastern coast of Florida.