Atriplex serenana |
Atriplex amnicola |
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bracteate orach, bractscale, saltscale, stinking orach |
swamp saltbush |
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Habit | Herbs, annual, erect or sprawling, usually branched often forming tangled mats to 10 × (3–)5–20 dm, ascending branches sparsely scurfy. | Shrubs, predominantly dioecious, mainly 10–15 dm. | ||||
Leaves | many, subsessile or very short petiolate; blade subconcolorous, lanceolate to oblong, elliptic, or oval, (8–)10–30(–40) × 3–12(–15) mm, margin sharply dentate to entire. |
short petiolate; blade elliptic to narrowly oblong or narrowly hastate with short divaricate basal lobes, 10–25 mm, margin entire or remotely dentate, apex obtuse to acute. |
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Staminate flowers | in glomerules in terminal spikes or panicles 3–20 cm, or reduced to solitary, rounded, terminal glomerule. |
in compact glomerules 5 mm thick, forming terminal spikes. |
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Pistillate flower(s) | in small clusters, axillary. |
in axillary clusters and forming short, dense terminal spikes. |
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Seeds | brown, 1–1.3(–1.5) mm. |
circular. |
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Fruiting | bracteoles sessile or subsessile (stipe to 1 mm), cuneate-orbicular to obovate, somewhat compressed, 2.1–3.5 × (1.7–)2–3.7 mm, united 1/2 of length, margin sharply and often slenderly toothed beyond middle, faces often rather strongly veined, smooth or with 1 or more slender or flattened appendages. |
bracteoles somewhat rhombic to semicircular, biconvex, 4–6 mm wide, with a short hard turbinate base, thick and hard throughout or with a herbaceous margin, lacking appendages. |
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2n | = 18. |
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Atriplex serenana |
Atriplex amnicola |
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Phenology | Flowering summer–fall. | |||||
Habitat | Sea beaches | |||||
Elevation | 10 m (0 ft) | |||||
Distribution |
CA; NV; nw Mexico
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CA; Australia [Introduced in North America] |
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Discussion | Varieties 2 (2 in the flora). (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
This is a singular, large, mostly dioecious shrub well established on the beach at Malibu, California. It produces abundant, hard, rhombic fruiting bracteoles. In its native western Australia, it occurs in coastal regions and inland along creeks and the outer margins of salt lakes. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
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Key |
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Source | FNA vol. 4, p. 361. | FNA vol. 4, p. 344. | ||||
Parent taxa | Chenopodiaceae > Atriplex > subg. Obione > sect. Obione > subsect. Arenariae | Chenopodiaceae > Atriplex > subg. Atriplex > sect. Dialysex | ||||
Sibling taxa | ||||||
Subordinate taxa | ||||||
Name authority | A. Nelson ex Abrams: Fl. Los Angeles, 128. (1904) | Paul G. Wilson: Fl. Australia 4: 129, 322. (1984) | ||||
Web links |