Atriplex pentandra |
Atriplex acanthocarpa |
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seas hore orach |
armed saltbush, burscale, tubercled saltbush |
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Habit | Herbs, annual or perennial, sprawling to erect, often suffrutescent at the base, much branched and clump-forming, 3–10 dm. | Shrubs or subshrubs, dioecious, evergreen, mainly 2–10 × 4–10+ dm, woody especially basally, unarmed; branchlets obtusely angled to subterete. | ||||
Stems | obtusely angled, finely scurfy when young. |
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Leaves | sessile or short petiolate; blade paler abaxially, oblong or rhombic-ovate to broadly obovate or narrowly oblong or narrowly elliptic, 10–30 × (1–)3–15 mm, thin, base rounded to cuneate, margin repand-dentate or sinuate-dentate to undulate or distal ones or all of them entire, apex rounded to acute, mucronate, densely white scurfy abaxially, grayish green and usually glabrate adaxially. |
persistent, proximal ones opposite, becoming alternate distally, short petiolate or subsessile; blade oblong to oblong-lanceolate, ovate, obovate, or spatulate, 12–40(–50) × 5–25 mm, base commonly subhastate to cuneate, margin entire or sinuate-dentate to strongly undulate-crisped, apex acute. |
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Staminate flowers | in short, dense, naked terminal spikes or panicles; calyx 5-cleft, lobes green keeled. |
in interrupted or crowded glomerules 2–4.5 mm thick, in sparsely leafy paniculate spikes to 5+ dm. |
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Pistillate flowers | fascicled in axils. |
few to solitary, in axillary clusters or in crowded or interrupted, often leafy, erect, branched spicate racemes or racemose panicles to 25+ cm. |
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Seeds | brown, 1–1.5 mm. |
brown, 1.5–2 mm. |
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Fruiting | bracteoles sessile or with stipes to 0.5 mm, broadly cuneate-orbiculate, compressed, (2–) 2.5–4.5 × (1.5–)2.6–5 mm, usually as broad as or broader than long, much thickened at maturity, united only at truncate or broadly cuneate base, margin deeply and acutely dentate, faces with 2, sometimes swollen, dentate crests or covered with irregular, conic-acute, corky tubercles, seldom smooth. |
bracteoles on slender or stout stipes (2–)4–20 mm (or sessile), body broadly elliptic to globose, 6–15 mm and wide, spongy, united to the linear apex, margin deeply laciniate, faces appendaged with flattened to hornlike tubercles to 8 mm. |
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Atriplex pentandra |
Atriplex acanthocarpa |
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Phenology | Flowering summer–fall. | |||||
Habitat | Sandy seashores, coastal salt marshes | |||||
Elevation | 0-50 m (0-200 ft) | |||||
Distribution |
AL; CT; FL; GA; LA; MA; MS; NC; SC; TX; West Indies; South America (Venezuela and Colombia to Peru) |
AZ; NM; TX; n Mexico
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Discussion | D. S. Correll and M. C. Johnston (1970), treated both Atriplex texana and A. wardii at the specific level. The diagnostic features used to distinguish them, dentate versus entire leaf blades and smooth versus tuberculate faces of fruiting bracteoles, fail singly and in combination. Both taxa were regarded by H. M. Hall and F. E. Clements (1923) as variants of typical A. pentandra, and this worker tentatively agrees with those authors’ conclusions. Specimens from Galveston, Texas—the type locality of A. wardii—are apparently intermediate with A. mucronata (see below) and form the basis on which A. wardii was founded. Some of those specimens have been annotated by me and others as A. mucronata. The plants have entire leaves more closely matching those of A. mucronata, but the small fruiting bracteoles, though usually lacking tubercles on the faces, are of similar proportions to those of typical A. pentandra. Atriplex pentandra and A. mucronata are certainly very closely allied. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Varieties 2 (2 in the flora). (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
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Key |
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Source | FNA vol. 4, p. 362. | FNA vol. 4, p. 370. | ||||
Parent taxa | Chenopodiaceae > Atriplex > subg. Obione > sect. Obione > subsect. Arenariae | Chenopodiaceae > Atriplex > subg. Pterochiton | ||||
Sibling taxa | ||||||
Subordinate taxa | ||||||
Synonyms | Axyris pentandra, A. texana, A. wardii | Obione acanthocarpa | ||||
Name authority | (Jacquin) Standley: in N. L. Britton et al., N. Amer. Fl. 21: 54. (1916) | (Torrey) S. Watson: Proc. Amer. Acad. Arts 9: 117. (1874) | ||||
Web links |