Flora of North America species comparison

fibrous, taprooted, sometimes fusiform or bulbous, fleshy and thickened in Beta.

erect, green, only occasionally developing some red or purple, usually with primary and some secondary branches, 10–70 cm, ultimate branches often long and cylindric;

leaf and bract apices usually obtuse, not mucronate.

sometimes succulent and apparently jointed, or with slippery and aromatic bark, sometimes spiny, alternate or opposite;

pubescence silvery, sometimes stellate or glandular, often scurfy from inflated salt glands that senesce into white flakes.

simple, usually alternate, occasionally opposite, lacking stipules, petiolate or sessile, sometimes reduced to small scales, or fleshy;

blade linear to broadly triangulate in outline, margins entire to serrate, serrate-dentate, or lobed.

flowers solitary or clustered in axillary or terminal glomerules or in short, cylindric spikes;

bracts absent or 1–5, deciduous or persistent, of various shapes.

cylindric, 2–8 cm, with 5–25 fertile segments;

bracts covering only base of cymes.

bisexual or unisexual, uniseriate, radially or rarely bilaterally symmetric;

bracteoles absent or 1–5, connate basally, green;

perianth segments 5, sometimes 1 or absent, green, inconspicuous, fleshy in Salicornia and Sarcocornia, strongly imbricate in Nitrophila;

petals absent;

stamens absent or 1–5, usually as many as and opposite perianth lobes;

pistils absent or (1–)2(–3);

styles 1–3, sometimes with stylopodium;

ovary usually superior, half-inferior in Sarcobatus, inferior and connate with receptacle in fruit in Beta, 1-locular with single, basally attached ovule.

usually 1, campylotropous, bitegmic, crassinucellate.

1 per flower, black, brown, reddish brown, or mixture, flattened vertically or rounded, margins winged or not winged, surfaces smooth and shiny or reticulate, regulate, verrucate, prickly, or indistinct, morphology variable and strongly influenced by plant photoperiod;

seed coat smooth, striate, or verrucate when pericarp is removed;

embryo large, curved to annular or spirally coiled;

radicle position median or basal, ascending or pointing outward;

endosperm usually digested by developing embryo and food storage taken over by perisperm.

segments (2d–4th in main spikes) ± cylindric, 3.2–7.6 × 2.4–5 mm, usually longer than wide, margins 0.3–0.4 mm wide, scarious.

flowers oval or rhombic to semicircular distally, 1.7–3.5 × 1.4–2.7 mm, usually longer than wide, usually not conspicuously larger than lateral flowers, usually not reaching distal edge of segment;

anthers always exserted, 0.3–0.5 mm, dehiscing after exsertion.

structures: bracteoles or fruiting bracts brown, black, or reddish brown, monomorphic or sometimes dimorphic;

perianth segments deciduous or persistent in mature fruits and of various shapes and ornamentation, accrescent around fruits;

fruits achenes or utricles, vertical or horizontal within perianth parts, pericarp (ovary wall) adherent or nonadherent, chartaceous or papery, sometimes reticulate, mottled or smooth.

common.

= 9.

= 36.