The flat and slightly fleshy leaves are very variably shaped (lanceolate, triangular, ovate, cordate, kidney-shaped, or roundish), up to 68 mm long and 2,5–45 mm wide, with distinct membranous margins, often half-stem-clasping, the lower ones often decurrent, the upper ones often auriculate.

The tube of the fruit is broadly barrel-shaped, at its bottom with deep, furrow-like, linear or curved pits.

auriculus by lanceolate, only 2,5–9 mm wide leaves, that are hardly clasping and not or very shortly decurrent, and by longer stigmas.

[1][2] The species has been first published in 1834 by Alfred Moquin-Tandon as Salsola auricula (an image without description in C. P. Bélanger: Voyage aux Indes Orientales.

Victor Petrovič Botschantzev included the species into the genus Halothamnus in 1981 (In: Botaniceskjij Žurnal SSSR 66,1, p. 134).