Atriplex fruticulosa (Ball Saltbush)

Overview

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Vulnerable

Interesting Facts

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Common Names

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Common Names in English:

Ball Saltbush, Little Oak Orach

Description

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Family Amaranthaceae

Herbs, clambering subshrubs , shrubs , or lianas. Leaves alternate or opposite, entire, exstipulate . Flowers small, bisexual or unisexual , or sterile and reduced, subtended by 1 membranous bract and 2 bracteoles, solitary or aggregated in cymes. Inflorescences elongated or condensed spikes (heads ), racemes , or thyrsoid structures of varying complexity. Bracteoles membranous or scarious . Tepals 3-5, membranous, scarious or subleathery, 1-, 3-, 5-, or 7(-23) -veined. Stamens as many as tepals and opposite these, rarely fewer than tepals; filaments free , united into a cup at base or ± entirely into a tube , filament lobes present or absent, pseudostaminodes present or absent; anthers (1- or) 2-loculed, dorsifixed , introrsely dehiscent . Ovary superior, 1-loculed; ovules 1 to many; style persistent , short and indistinct or long and slender; stigma capitate, penicillate , 2-lobed or forming 2 filiform branches. Fruit a dry utricle or a fleshy capsule, indehiscent, irregularly bursting, or circumscissile. Seeds lenticular , reniform , subglobose, or shortly cylindric , smooth or verruculose .

About 70 genera and 900 species: worldwide; 15 genera (one introduced ) and 44 species (three endemic, 14 introduced) in China.

Morphology of the androecium, perianth (tepals), and the inflorescence has traditionally been used to circumscribe genera and tribes . Pseudostaminodia are interstaminal appendages with variously shaped apices. Filament appendages are the lateral appendages of filaments (one on each side) . The basic structure of the inflorescence is the cyme (branchlets arising from the bracteole axils, the bracteoles serving as bracts for upper flowers), which can be reduced to one flower with two bracteoles and a bract. Units of dispersal vary considerably (capsules opening with lower part persistent, flower and bracteoles falling together, or cymose partial inflorescences breaking off above bract) and can be characteristic for genera. Several genera possess long trichomes serving dispersal at the base of the tepals.[1]

Genus Atriplex

Herbs or shrubs, annual or perennial , monoecious or dioecious, often with bladderlike hairs that collapse to form silvery or scurfy (mealy ) vesture, less often with elongate trichomes . Leaves persistent or tardily deciduous, alternate, partially opposite, or opposite, sessile or petiolate ; blade entire, serrate, or lobed , with venation either of Kranz-type or normal dicotyledonous type, axillary buds inconspicuous or lacking. Inflorescences axillary or terminal ; flowers borne in axillary clusters or glomerules , or in terminal spikes or spicate panicles. Staminate flowers with 3-5-parted calyx, ebracteate ; stamens 3-5. Pistillate flowers lacking perianth, pistil naked, or in few species with (1-) 3-5-lobed perianth, commonly enclosed within pair of foliaceous bracteoles; stigmas 2. Fruiting bracteoles enlarged in fruit, of various shapes and variously connate or not, thickened, and appendaged; pericarp free , tightly enclosed in the fruiting bracteoles. Seeds flattened, mainly vertical ; radicle inferior, lateral , or superior. x = 9.

Species ca. 250: worldwide, mainly in subarctic , temperate , and subtropical regions.

Many species of Atriplex are halophytic, others occupy soils low in dissolved particulates.

Prior to the 1900s, the genus Suckleya was treated within Atriplex, but its obcompressed fruiting bracteoles are quite unlike anything in Atriplex, and the plants were recognized as a distinct genus.[2]

Physical Description

Species Atriplex fruticulosa

Herbs, perennial , decumbent-spreading to erect , fruticose at base , 0.5-3(-5) dm. Stems simple or much branched, scurfy , finally glabrate . Leaves 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. Staminate flowers in short, dense, interrupted terminal spikes. Pistillate flowers in small, axillary clusters . Fruiting 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 . Seeds dark brown, 1.4-1.7 mm. [source]

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. [source]

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. [source]

Habit: Subshrub , Forb/herb

Habitat

Clay or alkaline soils , open site, shrublands; 700+ m [3].

Biology

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Reproduction

Duration: Perennial

Taxonomy

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Domain: Eukaryota () - Whittaker & Margulis,1978 - eukaryotes
- Kingdom: Plantae () - Haeckel, 1866 - Plants
  - Subkingdom: Viridaeplantae () - Cavalier-Smith, 1981
    - Phylum: Tracheophyta () - Sinnott, 1935 ex Cavalier-Smith, 1998 - Vascular Plants
      - Subphylum: Euphyllophytina ()
        Infraphylum: Radiatopses () - Kenrick & Crane, 1997
        Class: Spermatopsida () - Brongniart, 1843
        Subclass: Caryophyllidae () - Takhtajan, 1967
        Superorder: Caryophyllanae () - Takhtajan, 1967
        Order: Caryophyllales () - Perleb, 1826
        Suborder: Chenopodiineae ()
        Family: Amaranthaceae () - Adanson, 1763 ex A.L. de Jussieu, 1789, nom. cons. - amaranthes, pigweed
        Subfamily: Chenopodioideae ()
        Tribe: Atripliceae ()
        Genus: Atriplex () - C. Linnaeus, 1753 - Orach, saltbush [ancient Latin name]
        Specific epithet: fruticulosa - Jepson
        Botanical name: - Atriplex fruticulosa Jepson

Notes

Name Status: Accepted Name .

Last scrutiny: 15-Mar-2000

Similar Species

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Members of the genus Atriplex

ZipcodeZoo has pages for 147 species, subspecies, varieties, forms, and cultivars in this genus. Here are just 100 of them:

More Info

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Notes

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Contributors

Brands, S.J. (comp.) 1989-present. The Taxonomicon. Universal Taxonomic Services, Zwaag, The Netherlands. Accessed January 10, 2012.

Data Sources

Accessed through GBIF Data Portal November 19, 2007:

Berkeley Natural History Museums, University and Jepson Herbaria DiGIR provider
USDA PLANTS, USDA PLANTS Database

Identifiers

Biodiversity Heritage Library NamebankID: 2646753
Catalogue of Life Accepted Name Code: ITS-20530
Global Biodiversity Information Facility Taxonkey: 13733420
Globally Unique Identifier: urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:163813-1
Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS) Taxonomic Serial Number (TSN): 20530
International Plant Names Index (IPNI) ID: 163811-1
Natural Heritage Network Species Identifier: PDCHE040L0
U.S.D.A. Plant Symbol: ATFR
Zipcode Zoo Species Identifier: 24156

Footnotes

Bojian Bao, Thomas Borsch & Steven E. Clemants "Amaranthaceae". in Flora of China Vol. 5 Page 415. Published by Science Press (Beijing) and Missouri Botanical Garden Press. Online at EFloras.org. [back]
Stanley L. Welsh "Atriplex". in Flora of North America Vol. 4 Page 226, 260, 268, 293,. Oxford University Press. Online at EFloras.org. [back]
"Atriplex fruticulosa". in Flora of North America Vol. 4 Page 326, 358, 363. Oxford University Press. Online at EFloras.org. [back]

Atriplex fruticulosa

Overview

Interesting Facts

Common Names

Description

Family Amaranthaceae

Genus Atriplex

Physical Description

Species Atriplex fruticulosa

Habitat

Biology

Reproduction

Taxonomy

Notes

Similar Species

Members of the genus Atriplex

More Info

Further Reading

Notes

Contributors

Data Sources

Identifiers

Footnotes