Atriplex serenana |
Atriplex spinifera |
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bracteate orach, bractscale, saltscale, stinking orach |
spinescale saltbush, spiny 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, dioecious, erect, intricately much branched, mainly 3–15 dm; branchlets terete, becoming rigid and spinose. | ||||
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 to sessile; blade ovate-deltate to elliptic or spatulate, (5–)10–27 mm, entire or subhastate. |
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Staminate flowers | in glomerules in terminal spikes or panicles 3–20 cm, or reduced to solitary, rounded, terminal glomerule. |
borne in small axillary glomerules. |
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Pistillate flower(s) | in small clusters, axillary. |
borne solitary or few in bract axils on short, spinose, lateral branchlets of a paniculate inflorescence. |
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Seeds | brown, 1–1.3(–1.5) mm. |
reddish brown, 2–2.8 mm. |
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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 or nearly so, body globose, connate, constricted below oblong to orbicular wings, 7–15 ×3.5–10 mm, entire or obscurely dentate, faces smooth to sparingly cristate. |
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2n | = 18. |
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Atriplex serenana |
Atriplex spinifera |
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Phenology | Flowering summer–fall. | |||||
Habitat | Xeric saline substrates, with mixed salt desert shrubs | |||||
Elevation | 30-1300 m (100-4300 ft) | |||||
Distribution |
CA; NV; nw Mexico
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CA
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Discussion | Varieties 2 (2 in the flora). (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Spiny saltbush apparently forms occasional hybrids with phases of Atriplex canescens, as indicated by the presence of wings on some of the fruiting bracteoles. (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. 377. | ||||
Parent taxa | Chenopodiaceae > Atriplex > subg. Obione > sect. Obione > subsect. Arenariae | Chenopodiaceae > Atriplex > subg. Pterochiton | ||||
Sibling taxa | ||||||
Subordinate taxa | ||||||
Name authority | A. Nelson ex Abrams: Fl. Los Angeles, 128. (1904) | J. F. Macbride: Contr. Gray Herb. 53: 11. (1918) | ||||
Web links |