It is a dioecious evergreen shrub or tree of the pistacio genus, growing up to 20 m (66 ft) tall, adapted to the dry environment.

The tree reaches 5–15 m tall, and rarely is a shrub, often with multiple stems, the trunk of 0.6 m in diameter, and its bark color is brown-black and fissured.

It is found in dry evergreen forest (often with Juniperus and Olea - Euclea) and associated shrubs or wooded grassland, thickets of Buxus, deciduous with Combretum, Acacia and Barkey in soils of limestone, sandstone, or basalt, to an altitude of 900–2550 m. P. aethiopica have many adaptations to aridity, such as an advanced development of palisade tissue and extensive root growth.

In the main part of its range in North and East Africa, the species is fairly common because is used for a variety of purposes, including timber, dye, fodder, agriculture and livestock food.

An outlying subpopulation in Arabia is restricted to Jebel Iraf on the old North Yemen-South Yemen border.