Atriplex coulteri
Atriplex californica
Coulter's orach, Coulter's orache, Coulter's saltbush
California orach, California saltbush
frequently tinged with red, much branched, sparsely scurfy.
many branched, subterete, 1.5–5 dm, white scurfy when young.
many, sessile or short petiolate;
blade obovate, oblong, oblanceolate, or elliptic, (5–)7–20 × 1–3(–5) mm, base cuneate, margin entire, apex acute.
numerous, often crowded, alternate or proximalmost opposite;
blade narrowly lanceolate to narrowly oblanceolate or elliptic, 4–20 × 1–5 mm, acute at both ends, gray scurfy.
in glomerules in distal axils and short terminal spikes.
in terminal bracteate spikes, or mixed with pistillate in rather dense axillary clusters, 4-merous.
in small axillary clusters.
brown, 1.3–1.5 mm.
dark (black), 1–2 mm.
bracteoles sessile or subsessile, broadly obovate, 2–3 mm and as broad or about as broad, united 1/2 of length, margin free, deeply and sharply dentate, narrowed at summit, faces smooth or sometimes tuberculate.
bracteoles sessile, rhombic-ovate to ovate, scarcely united, 2.5–4 mm, margin entire, acute.
Atriplex coulteri
Atriplex californica
Of conservation concern.
Atriplex coulteri is closely allied to the geographically disjunct A. fruticulosa, from which it is said to differ in the compressed, small (2.5–3 mm) versus thickened and larger (3–5 mm) bracts. Specimens of A. fruticulosa, including the type, examined by me have bracteoles compressed-thickened, but hardly “globoid” as stated in the key to the species by H. M. Hall and F. E. Clements (1923). Additional specimens borrowed from California might clarify the situation; otherwise the two species are sufficiently close as to be treated as a single entity.
(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
H. M. Hall and F. E. Clements (1923) placed great emphasis on the inferior radicle, dioecious habit, and free bracts in stating that there are no close relatives of Atriplex californica in North America. P. C. Standley (1916) regarded the radicle as lateral or superior, not inferior, and placed the species at the beginning of his treatment of the American species. Plants of A. californica, however, form a mirror-image, matched pair with A. watsonii, with which they share habit, leaf conformation, staminate glomerules arranged, at least partially, in terminal interrupted spikes, and Kranz anatomy, but from which they differ in the radicle position, valves of the fruiting bracteoles free beyond the middle, monoecious habit, and mostly alternate leaves. The interpretation by Hall and Clements of radicle position as fundamental is made problematic by the apparent random occurrence of a great many morphologic features from place to place within the genus and often within the taxon. Each character fails individually as having definitive taxonomic importance, making difficult or impossible an ultimately satisfactory phylogenetic arrangement. It is not, however, the character that makes the species, rather, it is the entire syndrome of features that constitutes the taxon. Most certainly A. californica is more closely allied to American taxa than to those from other regions of the world.
(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
CA
WildflowerSearch
iNaturalist
USDA Plants Database
