Shell variable in size, form, and coloring, rather solid, with a moderate spire and canal of equal length, with three to four heavy varices; there are one or two, sometimes three, intervarical ribs, which are generally strong and often knoblike. Throughout, the shell is covered with strong ribs, which often break into tubercles, and besides these there are generally revolving, broken threads. Frequently the growth lines are raised into lamellae, and the entire surface becomes frilled. The surface is generally variegated with whitish and fulvous brown; sometimes the shell is imperfectly banded. The aperture may be nearly white, yellow, or brownish, orange, and it is frequently marked with very dark brown.
Length, 50 to 85; diameter, 30 to 50 mm.

The shell is moderately large (maximum length 120 mm) and globose-fusiform. The spire is moderately high to high, consisting of two smooth nuclear whorls and seven convex postnuclear whorls. The suture is generally obscured by the succeeding whorl. The body whorl is large and globose. The aperture is large and ovate, with a broad, shallow anal sulcus, this delimited parietally by a spiral ridge. The outer apertural lip is coarsely crenate and erect, most prominently anteriorly; its interior is strongly but briefly lirate. The columellar lip is adherent and spreading, detached and erect below to form a moderate inductura; a long series of pustules of varying size and shape is found over the columellar region. The siphonal canal is broad, moderate in length, narrowly open to the right, and strongly, distally recurved.
The body whorl bears three or four nodose or briefly spinose varices. Other axial sculpture consists of one or two elongate nodes in each intervarical space. Spiral sculpture consists of alternating major and minor cords, these developed into knobs where they intersect the intervarical nodes, and into short, open, sharp spines where they intersect the varices. In addition, minute spiral threads and axial lamellae cover the entire shell.
The ground color of the shell is gray-brown to yellow-brown. Three interrupted brown spiral bands on the body are most apparent on the leading edge of each varix and on the interior of the outer apertural lip. The color of the aperture varies from pale yellow to yellow-brown, with a brown blotch of greater or lesser extent in the parietal region.

Distribution: Texas; North Carolina to Florida to Brazil; Bermuda. Size: 80 mm.
Description: Color from brownish-yellow to darker brown with some species having different tints of brown bands and dark spots on the outer lip; shape broad and spindlelike; sculpture of convex teleoconch whorls with 3 varices on each whorl, with hollow, blunt spines or nodules on the varices; intervarical ribs crossed by irregular, scaly, spiral cords; aperture subcircular; outer lip dentition nodulose; parietal shield pressed to body whorl; columella smooth.
Habitat: Grass beds; sand; hidden under rocks. Depth range 0 to 73 m (240 ft). Remarks: Similar to P. oculatus, but parietal lip narrower and inner area of outer lip dentition nodulose. See Clench and Perez-Farfante (1945); Redfern (2001). Synonym: Murex pomum Gmelin, 1791.

Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and the northern Gulf of Mexico to the southern Caribbean and northern Brazil, generally intertidal.