Atriplex saccaria |
Atriplex fruticulosa |
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sack saltbush, sack saltweed, stalk orach, stalk orache |
ball saltbush, ballscale, little oak orach |
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Habit | Herbs, erect, forming rounded clumps. | Herbs, perennial, decumbent-spreading to erect, fruticose at base, 0.5–3(–5) dm. | ||||||||
Stems | mainly 0.5–4(–5) dm; stems usually branched from base, terete, stout, angled; herbage scurfy. |
simple or much branched, scurfy, finally glabrate. |
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Leaves | alternate or proximalmost subopposite, short petiolate or distal ones sessile; petiole 2–5 mm; blade cordate-ovate or subreniform to ovate to deltoid-ovate or oval, mainly 6–40 × 4–30 mm, base truncate to subcordate or broadly cuneate, margin entire or in some subhastately lobed or sometimes undulate-dentate, apex acute to rounded. |
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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Staminate flowers | in short, dense, interrupted terminal spikes. |
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Pistillate flowers | usually in fascicles of 1–3 in proximal axils. |
in small, axillary clusters. |
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Seeds | brownish to whitish, 1.5–2.3 mm. |
dark brown, 1.4–1.7 mm. |
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Staminate | glomerules in distal axils or in short, naked, terminal (early deciduous) panicles; flowers with 5-parted calyx. |
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Fruiting | bracteoles monomorphic or dimorphic, larger ones on stipes (2–)4–8(–15) mm, others sessile, united at base, round-triangular or suborbicular, 4–6 mm, irregularly and coarsely dentate and with ± densely beset with flat, cristate, or hornlike appendages, smaller bracteoles (lacking or rare in var. asterocarpa) in same axils, oblong to cuneate, 3–4 mm, apex truncate, dentate only at summit, faces smooth. |
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. |
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Atriplex saccaria |
Atriplex fruticulosa |
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Phenology | Flowering summer–fall. | |||||||||
Habitat | Clay or alkaline soils, open site, shrublands | |||||||||
Elevation | 700+ m (2300+ ft) | |||||||||
Distribution |
AZ; CO; NM; UT; WY
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CA
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Discussion | Varieties 3 (3 in the flora). (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. Obione > sect. Obione > subsect. Saccariae | Chenopodiaceae > Atriplex > subg. Obione > sect. Obione > subsect. Arenariae | ||||||||
Sibling taxa | ||||||||||
Subordinate taxa | ||||||||||
Synonyms | A. truncata var. saccaria, Obione saccaria | |||||||||
Name authority | S. Watson: Proc. Amer. Acad. Arts 9: 112. (1874) | Jepson: Pittonia 2: 306. (1892) | ||||||||
Web links |