Brown and Sakkir (2004) cite the species from inland waters of Abu Dhabi Emirate. The draft Red Data Book for UAE plants (MEW 2010) considered this species as a junior synonym of T. arabica, common along the Gulf coast and adjacent to salt flats in the sandy deserts in the south of the Emirates. Jongbloed et al. (2003) considered T. nilotica the valid name with T. arabica a synonym, and gave a distribution along the Arabian Gulf coastline, as well as in sandy desert areas with near-surface brackish water. The species is a Saharo-Sindian element. It occurs from the eastern Mediterranean Greece (especially Crete), Lebanon, Palestine and Israel (Villar et al. 2014), south to Kenya in Africa, and east through the Arabian Peninsula (Board of Trustees, RBG Kew 2019). The species has been very widely introduced through cultivation.