Atriplex patula
Atriplex spinifera
common orache, halberd-leaf orache, spear orach, spear orache, spear oracle, spear saltbush, spear saltweed, spearscal e, spearscale orache
spinescale saltbush, spiny saltbush
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.
short petiolate to sessile;
blade ovate-deltate to elliptic or spatulate, (5–)10–27 mm, entire or subhastate.
compact or interrupted spiciform or paniculiform clusters.
mostly 5-merous.
borne in small axillary glomerules.
borne solitary or few in bract axils on short, spinose, lateral branchlets of a paniculate inflorescence.
dimorphic: brown, 2.5–3(–3.5) mm wide, or black, 1–2 mm wide;
radicle of brown seeds subbasal to median, antrorse.
reddish brown, 2–2.8 mm.
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 or nearly so, body globose, connate, constricted below oblong to orbicular wings, 7–15 ×3.5–10 mm, entire or obscurely dentate, faces smooth to sparingly cristate.
= 36.
Atriplex patula
Atriplex spinifera
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.)
Spiny saltbush apparently forms occasional hybrids with phases of Atriplex canescens, as indicated by the presence of wings on some of the fruiting bracteoles.
(Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.)
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