Sarcobatus. ClfEXOPODIACE.E. 59 



* * Wood '//-based perennials. 



3. S. Californica, Watson. Stout, 2 or 3 feet high, with herbaceous ascending 

 very leafy brandies, smooth or somewhat pubescent : leaves broadly linear, not 

 wider at base, a half to an inch long, acute, crowded upon the branchlets : flowers 

 large, 1 to 3 or more in the axils ; perianth cleft nearly to the base, the lobes not 

 appendaged : seeds vertical or horizontal, nearly a line broad, faintly reticulated. 

 Rev. Chenop. 89. 



In salt-marshes on the coast, about San Francisco. 



4. S. Torreyana, Watson. Erect, 2 or 3 feet high, with herbaceous leafy 

 branches, smooth or tomentose : leaves linear, subterete, narrow at base, to 1 

 inches long, mostly acute, the floral ones similar : clusters several-flowered : perianth 

 rather large, deeply cleft : seed vertical, f line broad, finely tuberculate. Rev. 

 Chenop. 88. Chenopodina Moquini, Torrey, Pacif. R. Rep. vii. 18. 



Santa Barbara to San Diego and eastward, and through the interior from Northern Nevada to 

 Colorado and Northern Mexico. Resembling S. fruticosa of the Old World. 



5. S. suffrutescens, Watson, 1. c. Shrubby or somewhat so, 2 or 3 feet high, 

 with slender diffuse or divaricate leafy branches, which are more or less tomen- 

 tose : leaves numerous, mostly small, half an inch long or less, linear to narrowly 

 oblong, narrow at base, obtuse or acute : flowers solitary or clustered, small, shortly 

 lobed : seed mostly vertical, less than | line broad, very obscurely tuberculate. 



In alkaline valleys from Southern California to the Rio Grande. 



14. SARCOBATUS, Nees. GREASE-WOOD. 



Flowers monoecious or dioecious, without bracts, dimorphous. Staminate flowers 

 in terminal aments, without perianth : stamens 2 to 5, irregularly arranged under a 

 stipitate peltate scale ; filaments very short ; anthers fleshy. Pistillate flowers axil- 

 lary, solitary or rarely clustered. Perianth a compressed ovate sac, adherent at the 

 contracted somewhat 2-lipped apex to the base of the stigmas, laterally margined 

 by a narrow erect slightly 2-lobed border, which becomes at length a broad circular 

 horizontal membranous veined wing. Ovary thin and hyaline, nearly filled by the 

 ovule. Style lateral, slender, adherent to the perianth, and terminated by two 

 thick exserted unequal stigmas. Seed vertical, with a double transparent mem- 

 branous testa. Embryo spiral, green, without albumen : radicle inferior. A rigidly 

 and divaricately branched somewhat spinescent shrub, of saline localities; leaves 

 fleshy, alternate, linear. PI. Neuwied, 20. Fremontla, Torrey. 



1. S. vermiculatus, Torrey. Erect and scraggy, 2 to 8 feet high, leafy, gla- 

 brous or the young twigs grayish puberulent ; branches with a smooth white 

 bark, spiny or spinescent : leaves \ to 1 J inches long, a line or two wide, narrow 

 at base : staminate spikes terminal, cylindrical, \ to 1 inch long, narrow ; the per- 

 sistent scales spirally arranged, rhombic-ovate, acute : stamens about 3, soon decidu- 

 ous : fruiting calyx coriaceous, 2 or 3 lines long, the wing 3 to G lines broad : 

 pericarp distinguishable with difficulty: seed half a line in diameter. Emory's 

 Rep. 149 ; Watson, Rev. Chenop. 86 ; Engelm. in Simpson's Rep. 445. Batis (?) 

 vermictilata, Hook. El. Bor.-Am. ii. 128. Sarcobatus Maximiliani, Nees ; Seubert, 

 Bot. Zeit. ii. 753, t. 7. Fremontia vermicularis, Torrey, Frem. Rep. 95 & 317, t. 3. 



Frequent in the alkaline valleys of the Great Basin, from the Sierra Nevada eastward to the 

 Upper Missouri and the headwaters of the Platte and Canadian, and southward to the Gila ; 

 the most prevalent of the several shrubs bearing the name of " Grease- wood. " The wood 

 is very compact and hard, of a light yellow color, but the stems rarely exceed 2 or 3 inches in 

 diameter, and are usually knotted and twisted ; the bush, however, though small is valuable for 

 fuel, and often the only resource. 



