Atriplex cinerea

Detailed description

Sprawling, semi-erect, woody, heavily branched, leafy, dioecious or subdioecious shrub, forming mounds up to 1.5 × 4 m. Branchlets stout, rooting freely on contact with soil; stems at first ridged and angular, soon becoming terete and woody with age. All parts of young growth covered in a fine, scurfy, farinose pubescence; coalescing with age to form silvery white scurfy scales. Leaves 15–20 × 32–46 mm, linear-oblong, lanceolate, rarely weakly hastate, silvery grey, greyish white or occasionally pinkish grey, under surface with pale white, thickened midrib. Petioles short, 1–3 mm, stout, silvery white. Leaf surface ± mat, glabrous, cuticle soon cracking in an anastomosing pattern made up of ± circular scales; apex white slightly thickened, apiculate, apiculus pink, deciduous, 0.5–0.8 mm; base acute, attenuate, rounded or very rarely truncate ; margin entire, lightly curved, occasionally sparsely glandular hairy near leaf base. Female flowers borne in leaf axils, either solitary, or in small axillary clusters, rarely forming axillary and terminal spikes. Female flowers occasionally found within the lower leaf axils of male plants. Perianth absent; bracteoles 2, 2 mm diameter, lower half fused, margins initially entire, either remaining so or developing appendages in fruit; stigmas 2, c.3 mm long, pink, filiform, slightly tapering, minutely plumose-papillate, ovary 0.35 mm, ovoid. Male inflorescence 30–140 mm long, conspicuous, dense, forming large interrupted or continuous oblong or obovoid spikes, these often panicled toward branch apices; glomerules 5–30 mm long, purple-green, pinkish red or wine-red. Flowers unisexual; perianth lobes 5, pink or wine-red, 1.7 mm long, obovate, apex sharply inflexed, cucullate, exterior towards apex with dense vesicular covering; stamens 5–6, filaments 0 .8 mm long, white, anthers 0.8 mm long, broad-oblanceolate, pollen yellowish golden. Fruiting bracteoles subsessile or shortly stipitate; stipe turbinate, woody; bracteoles ovoid to broadly deltoid or rhomboid, 6–10 mm long and wide, united towards base, corky or ± woody and swollen toward the centre and base, otherwise coriaceous with an entire margin; surface smooth or ornamented with verrucose appendages on one or both sides. Seed circular 3–4 mm diameter, testa chestnut-brown, smooth and glossy; radicle lateral, erect.