Atriplex patula
Atriplex lentiformis
common orache, halberd-leaf orache, spear orach, spear orache, spear oracle, spear saltbush, spear saltweed, spearscal e, spearscale orache
big saltbrush, big saltbush, quail bush
mostly erect and branched, branches green, obtusely angled or striate, glabrate.
alternate except the proximalmost, petiolate;
blade green on both sides, rhombic-lanceolate to lanceolate, oblong, or narrowly lance-oblong or hastate-ovate, 25–120 × 3–40(–75) mm, entire or toothed, proximal ones broadly cuneate or sometimes hastate subbasally with obliquely antrorse basal lobes, distal cauline leaves lanceolate and entire.
persistent, alternate, petiolate;
blade gray-green, deltate to rhombic, ovate, or oblong-elliptic, 5–50 × 5–50 mm, base truncate to subhastate, margin entire to repand or subhastately lobed, apex rounded to obtuse, scurfy.
compact or interrupted spiciform or paniculiform clusters.
mostly 5-merous.
yellow, in clusters 1–2 mm wide, borne in panicles 0.5–5 dm.
with less complex panicles.
dimorphic: brown, 2.5–3(–3.5) mm wide, or black, 1–2 mm wide;
radicle of brown seeds subbasal to median, antrorse.
brown, 0.8–1.6 mm wide.
bracteoles green becoming black, rhombic to rhombic-triangular, or ovate-rhombic, compressed, ± uniformly sized, 2–7(–20) mm, base mostly hastate, acute, margin united almost to middle, entire or sparingly toothed, surfaces tuberculate.
bracteoles sessile, orbiculate to oval, greatly compressed, mainly 3–4.5 mm and wide, crenulate, apex rounded.
= 36.
= 18.
Atriplex patula
Atriplex lentiformis
Atriplex patula appears to have been a rather recent introduction in North America from Eurasia, not arriving perhaps until sometime in the early to mid-eighteenth century. It simulates depauperate specimens of A. dioica, A. glabriuscula, and other similar species when leaves are reduced to a near-linear profile. Such specimens are difficult if not impossible to assign to any of the species.
(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
Materials of big saltbush from the coastal and near coastal regions of California have somewhat broader, merely ovate, rounded leaves, and they have been regarded either at species level as Atriplex breweri S. Watson or at either varietal or subspecific level (see synonymy). The plants intergrade completely in interior situations with typical A. lentiformis, and their recognition at taxonomic level seems superfluous. C. A. Hanson (1962) noted the existence of putative hybrids between A. lentiformis and the herbaceous species A. leucophylla and A. davidsonii. Putative hybrids are also known between this species and A. canescens.
(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
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