Atriplex glabriuscula |
Atriplex fruticulosa |
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bract orache, glabrous orach, scotland orache |
ball saltbush, ballscale, little oak orach |
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Habit | Herbs, monoecious, prostrate or sprawling, or sometimes erect, branched, (1–)2–10 dm; branches opposite or subopposite. | Herbs, perennial, decumbent-spreading to erect, fruticose at base, 0.5–3(–5) dm. | ||||||||
Stems | green and striped, often blue-green when fresh, weakly ridged, sparsely scurfy to glabrous. |
simple or much branched, scurfy, finally glabrate. |
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Leaves | petiole 0.2–2.5(–3.5) cm; blade all entire or some or all triangular or lance-hastate with lobes spreading to antrorse, 5–100 × 3–80 mm, base abruptly to narrowly cuneate, entire or irregularly toothed. |
numerous, proximal ones mostly short petiolate, distal ones sessile; blade narrowly lanceolate to elliptic, 5–15(–20) × 2–4 mm, mostly acute at both ends, margin entire, densely gray scurfy. |
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Flowers | in loose glomerules, arranged in foliose, interrupted spikes or axillary, terminating stems and branches. |
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Staminate flowers | in short, dense, interrupted terminal spikes. |
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Pistillate flowers | in small, axillary clusters. |
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Seeds | dimorphic: brown, 2.5–4 mm wide (often the only ones present), or black, (1.2–)1.5–2.9(–3) mm wide; radicle median, ± antrorse, of brown seed basal and spreading. |
dark brown, 1.4–1.7 mm. |
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Bracteoles | green, becoming black or reddish to yellow brown, sessile or some short stipitate, venation obscure, ovate-triangular to rhombic-triangular, 5–13 mm, margin united almost to middle, with few irregular teeth or entire, apex abruptly acuminate, faces irregularly muricate, tuberculate, or smooth, inflated, spongy inner layer strongly developed at bracteole base. |
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Fruiting | bracteoles sessile or subsessile, broadly obovate to suborbicular in profile, slightly if at all compressed, 3–5 mm and almost as wide, united to middle, narrowly margined and acutely dentate beyond middle, sides tooth-crested or muricate, ± indurate. |
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2n | = 18, 36. |
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Atriplex glabriuscula |
Atriplex fruticulosa |
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Phenology | Flowering summer–fall. | |||||||||
Habitat | Clay or alkaline soils, open site, shrublands | |||||||||
Elevation | 700+ m (2300+ ft) | |||||||||
Distribution |
CT; MA; ME; NH; PA; AB; MB; NB; NS; PE; QC; Europe
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CA
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Discussion | Varieties 3 (3 in the flora). Members of the Atriplex glabriuscula complex occupy saline or brackish marshes and saline coastal strands mainly in the eastern maritime provinces of Canada, with extensions in similar habitats into the northeastern United States. They are seldom, if ever, ruderal weeds and appear to be indigenous or perhaps early introduced in some part from similar European habitats. The constituent taxa have been regarded at specific level (P. M. Taschereau 1972; I. J. Bassett et al. 1983). They are, however, alike in all major morphologic features, and are apparently closely allied. For those who wish to treat them at specific level, the names are supplied in the synonymy. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
H. M. Hall and F. E. Clements (1923) indicated a close relationship between Atriplex fruticulosa and A. coulteri. Both species are described as being perennial by D. Taylor and D. H. Wilken (1993), wherein A. coulteri was inadvertently left out of the key. Perhaps the size of the fruiting bracteoles, 3–5 mm in A. fruticulosa and 2–3 mm in A. coulteri, is diagnostic. Hall and Clements pointed to differences in habit of the plant, which vary from the erect woody forms represented by the type collection (and known only from them?) to the evidently more common phase in which the leafy stems are spreading or prostrate, and herbaceous throughout except at the very base, where they are attached to a more or less woody root crown. In some fruiting bracteoles the faces are bicristate as in the thornberi phase of Atriplex elegans, in which the teeth radiate around much of the bracteole margin, not mainly from above the middle as in the present species. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
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Key |
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Source | FNA vol. 4. | FNA vol. 4, p. 363. | ||||||||
Parent taxa | Chenopodiaceae > Atriplex > subg. Atriplex > sect. Teutliopsis | Chenopodiaceae > Atriplex > subg. Obione > sect. Obione > subsect. Arenariae | ||||||||
Sibling taxa | ||||||||||
Subordinate taxa | ||||||||||
Name authority | Edmondston: Fl. Shetland, 39. (1845) | Jepson: Pittonia 2: 306. (1892) | ||||||||
Web links |