[6] The species was first described under the basionym Chenopodium aegyptiacum in 1757 by Fredrik Hasselqvist,[1][7] an early Swedish scientific explorer of the Levant and Arabia, and a student of Linnaeus.

Hasselqvist collected the holotype in Alexandria, Egypt, although the Suaeda specialist Helmut Freitag stated in 1989 that it is probably lost.

The young stems are completely coloured a pale green, later becoming whitish to cream-coloured, and are terete or delicately striate in cross-section.

The stems end in a bracteate inflorescence, this is also variable in form: it can be either loose or densely flowered, and the floral spike can be either short or long.

[5][9] The upper leaves are narrowly obovate to clavate in shape, arched upwards to outwards, with a blunt end, and their bases attenuating into a short petiole.

The bracteoles are 0.8 to 1mm in length, narrowly ovate, trullate or triangular in shape, and have an acute or acuminate tip, and lacerated to toothed margins.

The free lobes of the tepals are also very succulent, curve inwards, are coloured green with hyaline margins, and somewhat cucullate.

[5] The perfect flowers have five stamens, are weakly protandrous, fig-shaped, about 2 to 2.5 in length,[5] 2.5 to 3mm in diameter,[5][9] have a deeply divided perianth, and are somewhat round-shaped.

[5] The glossy, black or blackish seeds are 0.9 to 1.2mm in length, 0.75 to 1mm in width,[5][9] 0.6 to 0.75mm thick,[5] and orbicular to ovoid,[9] and only slightly compressed or flattened, in shape,[5][9] with a short beak.

[5] The Flora Somalia states that the plants around the Red Sea develop a much more spongy perianth during fruiting, have oblique-shaped seeds, and with the base of the style not being conspicuously enlarged may belong to a different or new species.

[4] There are likewise two specimens collected in the estuary of the Jubba River in Somalia, of which at least one was said to unequivocally belong to this species in the early 1990s.

[4] In Africa it grows at low altitudes near sea level, in a habitat of coastal bushland dominated by dwarf shrubs and Suaeda species in general.

In Pakistan it has been found to grow in rather different plant communities and has been seen in various types of salt-marshes, along ditches and even sometimes as a weed in irrigated gardens and agricultural fields.