Plants annual, mat-forming. Culmsto 25 cm tall, tufted, ascending from prostrate bases, rooting at the nodes. Leaves: sheaths usually shorter than the internodes, the top sheaths longest, inflated, often enclosing the base of the synflorescence; blades 3-8 cm long, 2-4 mm wide, broadly linear, tough, flat, glaucous, margins thick, pectinate-spinose, tips acute. Synflorescences 3-6 cm long, about 0.8 cm wide, each node with 2 subequal, spikelets separated by a branch internode of about 0.2 mm; branches extending up to 1.5 mm beyond the distal spikelet, sometimes bearing a rudimentary 3rd spikelet, this sometimes reduced to a row of spines; branch bases about 0.3-0.5 mm long. First (lowest) spikelet on the branches 3.5-4 mm long, fertile, elliptic; lower glumes very small, membranous; upper glumes 5-ribbed, bearing hooked, thick-based spines with acute-acuminate tips; lemmas about 3 mm long, ovate-lanceolate, puberulous, tips sharply acute; second spikelet on each branch similiar to the first but 3.2-3.7 mm long, also fertile.
Tragus mongolorum grows in southern Asia from Pakistan to China and Thailand and on islands in the Indian ocean. It is a weedy species, often growing along roadsides and in disturbed sites.
This species was called Tragus roxburghii in the Flora of Pakistan, a name published in 1974. It was later discovered that Ohwi had name it Tragus mongolorum in 1941,hence the usage aopted here.