Shrubs, 1.5(-3) m tall. Branchlets straight, short, fragile. Leaves yellow-green, lanceolate or ovate-oblong to rhombic, 1-2 × ca. 0.5 mm, base attenuate and slightly decurrent, margin narrowly membranous, apex acuminate or acute, mucronate. Racemes lateral in old branches of previous year, blooming in early spring, to 4 cm × 5-7(-8) mm, laxly flowered or flowers congested apically and umbel-like, with sparse, brown, oblong scales; bracts brownish or greenish, ovate or narrowly elliptic, less than 1/2 as long as pedicels, margin membranous, cartilaginous in upper half, often incurved, obtuse. Pedicels ca. 2 mm. Flowers 4-merous. Calyx ca. 1 mm; sepals 4, ovate, margin broadly membranous, apex obtuse or acuminate, recurved at fruiting stage, outer 2 carinate. Petals 4, strongly spreading and reflexed, pink, rarely whitish pink, oblong-elliptic to oblong-obovate, ca. 2 mm, deciduous after anthesis. Disk dark red, fleshy, 4-lobed. Stamens 4, equaling or slightly exceeding petals; filaments dilated at base, inserted at apex of disk lobes; anthers red-purple, capitulate or apiculate. Styles 3; stigmas capitate. Capsule 3-4 mm, narrow. Fl. Apr-May, occasionally in autumn on current year’s branches for second time. Flowers blooming in autumn 5-merous. 2n = 24*.

Salty soils of river banks, lake basins, sand dunes in desert regions. Nei Mongol, Ningxia, Qinghai, Shaanxi, Xinjiang [Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Russia, Turkmenistan; SW Asia (Iran)].