Flora of North America species comparison

The green links below add additional plants to the comparison table. Blue links lead to other Web sites.
enable glossary links

Atriplex elegans var. elegans

Atriplex sect. Obione
Photo is of parent taxon

wheelscale, wheelscale saltbush
Habit Plants usually annual, usually monoecious.
Stems

0.5–4.5 dm.

Leaves

with Kranz anatomy.
Staminate flowers

with calyx lobes not crested.
Pistillate flowers

lacking or rarely with a perianth (in A. covillei), enclosed by a pair of bracteoles.
Seeds

1–1.5 mm.

radicle lateral or superior.
Fruiting

bracteoles sessile, orbicular but not especially samaralike, compressed, (2–)3–4 mm, united to beyond middle, margin dentate to incised, teeth 0.5–1 mm.

Bracteoles

cuneate to ovate or obovate, united at least to 1/2 of length, faces with tubercles or crests or smooth.

Atriplex elegans var. elegans

Atriplex sect. Obione
Phenology Flowering spring–fall.
Habitat Saline creosote bush scrub, deserts
Elevation below 800 m (below 2600 ft)
Distribution
from FNA
AZ; CA; NM; NV; TX; UT; n Mexico (Chihuahua, Sonora)
[BONAP county map]
United States; Mexico
Discussion

The faces of the fruiting bracteoles are typically smooth, but in some plants of southern Arizona especially the faces bear a single sub-basal crest, or more commonly paired crests alongside the bracteole median. The cristae rise and fall not only within populations but on individual plants, as pointed out by H. M. Hall and F. E. Clements (1923), and apparently lack taxonomic value. A sterile collection from Brewster County, Texas (B. H. Warnock 409-T), has long-attenuate leaf bases, the expanded portion of the blade spatulate-oblanceolate to oval. It is tentatively placed here, but might represent some species from south of the Mexican border.

Specimens of the “thornberi” phase, collected by Thornber, are present at UC: Santa Cruz Valley, Tucson, 16 Aug 1910, J. J. Thornber s.n., 2 sheets. At least some portion of the material by Thornber is possibly the type material for var. thornberi, but there is no indication on the sheets that they were seen by Jones.

(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)

Species 28 (23 in the flora).

(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
Source FNA vol. 4, p. 364. FNA vol. 4, p. 346.
Parent taxa Chenopodiaceae > Atriplex > subg. Obione > sect. Obione > subsect. Arenariae > Atriplex elegans Chenopodiaceae > Atriplex > subg. Obione
Sibling taxa
A. elegans var. fasciculata
Subordinate taxa
Synonyms A. elegans var. thornberi, A. thornberi
Name authority unknown unknown
Web links 
Unless otherwise noted, all data comes from the online version of the Flora of North America, who have made most of their content available via a Creative Commons license (CC BY 4.0).



Type/paste one or more Latin names into the boxes above; matching taxa will show up below the box as you type. You can use the up/down arrow keys to move through the list.

(If the plant you're looking for doesn't show up in the auto-complete list, that means it either isn't described in Flora of North America yet, or it's listed under a synonym. And please note that Flora of North America is still missing several plant families, including Apiaceae, Boraginaceae, and Polemoniaceae.)

Choose a data source: Flora of North America

The species comparison tool is brought to you by:
Northwest Wildflowers