The green links below add additional plants to the comparison table. Blue links lead to other Web sites.
enable glossary links
Photo is of parent taxon
Habit Herbs, dioecious or sometimes monoecious, (0.5–)1–5(–7) dm.
Leaves

on petioles 0.3–2.5(–3.5) cm proximally, becoming subsessile (rarely sessile) or more commonly short petiolate distally, blade conspicuously 3-veined, deltoid-ovate to orbicular-ovate or cordate-ovate to elliptic, 5–25(–35) mm and about as wide, base acute or cuneate to obtuse or subcordate, scurfy.

Flowers

of both sexes intermixed in axillary glomerules, or borne on separate plants.

Staminate flowers

5-merous.

Seeds

yellowish brown or greenish, 1–1.5(–2) mm.

Fruiting

bracteoles sessile, oval to obovate, 1.5–5.5  1.5–5 mm, apical tooth central to 2 rounded lobes, sometimes constricted basally, giving an overall violin shape, sometimes slenderly appendaged marginally and faces often obscured by appendages.

Atriplex powellii var. powellii

Phenology Flowering summer–fall.
Habitat Saline, usually fine-textured clay or silty substrates, in greasewood, rabbitbrush, shadscale, seepweed, mat-atriplex, juniper-pinyon, and blackbrush communities
Elevation 700-2000 m (2300-6600 ft)
Distribution
from FNA
AZ; CO; ID; MT; NE; NM; OR; SD; UT; WY; AB; SK
Discussion

This rather widely distributed annual approaches being truly dioecious, but in occasional specimens the flowers of the opposite gender are present, intermixed in glomerules, as in Atriplex powellii var. minuticarpa, resulting in monoecious individuals. Peculiar specimens are known which display hemispheric clusters of staminate flowers to 6 mm wide, especially on the west side of the San Rafael Swell in Utah; perhaps they are mere teratological forms. The species sometimes forms extensive stands on raw exposed geological strata in eastern Utah, especially on the Mancos Shale and its subordinate strata.

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

Source FNA vol. 4, p. 353.
Parent taxa Chenopodiaceae > Atriplex > subg. Obione > sect. Obione > subsect. Argenteae > Atriplex powellii
Sibling taxa
A. powellii var. minuticarpa
Synonyms A. nelsonii, A. philonitra
Name authority unknown
Web links