CIIENOPODIACEiE. 37 



2 feet long, the lower part nearly round, clotlied with reddish-greyish 

 bnrk. Leaves insensibly attenuated into the petiole, which is very 

 short, the largest ones 1^ to 3 inches long; most of those on the 

 flowering stems with short leafy branches or fascicles of small leaves in 

 their axils. Glomerules with barren and fertile flowers intermixed ; 

 spikes slightly interru[)ted tt) wards the base. Fruit perianth leathery, 

 I to ^ inch long, attenuated towards the base, mth two somewhat 

 spreading falcate lobes beyond the middle, between which there is a 

 projecting tooth at the apex. Seed rather smaller than rape seed, much 

 compressed, diflicult to separate from the calyx, which forms a kind 

 of false capsule open only at the apex over its investing pericarp. 

 Young branches, leaves on both sides, and calyces densely covered with 

 a continuous coating of dirty white scales, which cannot be rubbed off*. 



Sea Purslane. 



French, ArrocJie pompier. German, Portidalcartige Keilmelde. 



SPECIES VII.— A TRIPLEX PEDUNCULATA. Linn.', 



Plate MCCIX. 



Obiono pedunculata, Moq.-Tand. in B.C. Prod. Vol. XIII, Pt. ii. p. 115. Bah. Man, 



Brit. Bot. ed. vi. p. 290. 

 Halimus peduncnlatus, Wallr. Sclied. Crit. p. 117, Bah. in Trans. Bot. Soc. Edin. 



Vol. I. p. 15. KocJi, Syn. Fl. Germ, et Helv. ed. ii. p. 701 ; Fries, Summ. Veg. 



Scand. p. 54. 



Annual. Stem herbaceous, erect and nearly simple, or decumbent 

 and much branched ; branches divaricate. Leaves mostly alternate, 

 obovate or oblanceolate, wedgeshaped and gradually attenuated into the 

 petiole at the base, subobtuse ; the upper ones narrower ; none of them 

 hastate. Flowers monoecious, in glomerules arranged in a lax terminal 

 spike, leafy only at the base. Fruit perianth at first subsessile, but at 

 length with a long stalk, obdeltoid or obdeltoid-campanulate, com- 

 pressed, with the valves united as far up as the points of the lateral 

 lobes, 3-lobed at the apex, smooth on the back; the lateral lobes 

 elongate and subfalcate, the central lobe reduced to a minute mucro. 

 Seed very small, compressed, brown, dim, finely rugose. Stem not 

 striped; leaves densely clothed with contiguous rather dirty white 

 scales. 



In grassy salt marshes. Yery local. It occurs by the side of the 

 river Stonar, from about a mile and a half beyond Sandwich down to 

 the sea at Shellness, and also near Shorne Battery, below Gravesend, 

 Kent ; about Breydon Broad and Aldborough, Suff'olk ; near Yarmouth, 

 and also at Thornham and Holme-next- the-sea, m Norfolk; by the 

 river-side below Wisbeach, Cambridge, but not recently found there; 



