Atriplex serenana |
Atriplex hymenelytra |
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bracteate orach, bractscale, saltscale, stinking orach |
desert-holly |
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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, dioecious, 3–15+ dm, as wide, unarmed. | ||||
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. |
persistent, alternate, petiolate; blade greenish to silvery white, orbiculate to reniform or oval, 10–40 mm, as wide or wider, prominently dentate, teeth to 10 mm, permanently scurfy. |
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Staminate flowers | in glomerules in terminal spikes or panicles 3–20 cm, or reduced to solitary, rounded, terminal glomerule. |
yellow to purple-brown, in clusters 3–4 mm thick, borne in panicles to 3 cm. |
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Pistillate flower(s) | in small clusters, axillary. |
borne in inflorescences similar to staminate ones. |
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Seeds | brown, 1–1.3(–1.5) mm. |
brown, 2 mm wide; radicle sublateral. |
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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 sessile, rather prominently veined, orbiculate to reniform, strongly compressed, 7–10 × 7–10 mm, thin, united at base, margin entire to crenate, glabrous, lacking processes. |
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2n | = 18. |
= 18. |
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Atriplex serenana |
Atriplex hymenelytra |
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Phenology | Flowering spring. | |||||
Habitat | Warm desert shrub, on dry saline alluvial fans and hills | |||||
Elevation | 80-1200 m (300-3900 ft) | |||||
Distribution |
CA; NV; nw Mexico
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AZ; CA; NV; UT
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Discussion | Varieties 2 (2 in the flora). (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Atriplex hymenelytra occurs with saltbush, Larrea-Ambrosia, ephedra, and yucca. This is a handsome, rounded shrub with silvery white foliage, sometimes contrasting strongly with the peculiar substrates on which it grows. Its relationships to other of the southwestern species are recondite, but possibly it is allied to A. confertifolia, with which C. A. Hanson (1962) suggested an affinity. (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. 376. | ||||
Parent taxa | Chenopodiaceae > Atriplex > subg. Obione > sect. Obione > subsect. Arenariae | Chenopodiaceae > Atriplex > subg. Pterochiton | ||||
Sibling taxa | ||||||
Subordinate taxa | ||||||
Synonyms | Obione hymenelytra | |||||
Name authority | A. Nelson ex Abrams: Fl. Los Angeles, 128. (1904) | (Torrey) S. Watson: Proc. Amer. Acad. Arts 9: 129. (1874) | ||||
Web links |