This plant species was considered widespread along the Arabian Gulf coast (Jongbloed et al. 2003) and in the Hajar Mountains. The UAE national Red List workshop restricted the natural range to the Hajar Mountains and associated nearby gravel plains; although Al Mehairbi et al. (2019) retain an almost unbroken distribution along the Gulf coast to the border with Saudi Arabia, this requires confirmation, and the western-most confirmed observation is from the Al Wohoosh protected area on silty-sandy interdunal plains (G. Brown pers. comm. 2019). Probably introduced in parts of its range in the UAE through cultivation as a weed of crops. RBG Edinburgh Herbarium holds five specimens of the species, most from urban or cultivated areas. It has been recorded from the Wadi Wurayah buffer zone (Feulner 2016), Wadi al Ain (Mousa and Fawzi 2009), from the Ru'us al-Jibal (Feulner 2011), and from Wadi Tarabat at Jebel Hafeet (Fawzi and Ksiksi 2012). Outside the UAE, the native distribution is from Macaronesia, around the Mediterranean basin (although apparently absent from some countries and considered introduced to others), across northern and central Africa, through the Arabian Peninsula, to Pakistan; considered introduced to southern Africa, the Americas, Australia, and parts of Southeast Asia (Board of Trustees, RBG Kew 2018).