38 SELECT PLANTS FOR INDUSTRIAL CULTURE 



Atriplex hortensis, Linne. 



North and Middle Asia. The Arroche. An annual spinach- 

 plant. 



Atriplex nummularmm, Lindley. 



From Queensland through the desert tracts to Victoria and 

 South Australia. One of the tallest and most fattening and 

 wholesome of Australian pastoral salt -bushes, also highly 

 recommendable for artificial rearing, as the spontaneously- 

 growing plants, by close occupation of the sheep and cattle 

 runs, have largely disappeared, and as this useful bush even 

 in many wide tracts of Australia does not exist. 



Atriplex spongiosum, F. v. Mueller. 



Through a great part of Central Australia, extending to the 

 west coast. Available like the preceding and several other 

 native species for salt-bush culture. Unquestionably some of 

 the shrubby extra- Australian species, particularly those of 

 the Siberian and Californian steppes, could also be transferred 

 advantageously to salt-bush country elsewhere, to increase 

 its value, particularly for sheep pasture. 



Atriplex vesicarium, Reward.* 



In the interior of South-Eastern Australia and also in Central 

 Australia. Perhaps the most fattening and most relished of 

 all the dwarf pastoral salt-bushes of Australia, holding out in 

 the utmost extremes of drought, and not scorched even by 

 sirocco-like blazes. Its vast abundance over extensive salt- 

 bush plains of the Australian interior, to the exclusion of 

 almost every other bush except A. halimoides, indicates the 

 facility with which this species disseminates itself. 



Atropa Belladonna, Linne. 



The Deadly Nightshade. South and Middle Europe and 

 Western Asia. A most important perennial medicinal herb. 

 The highly powerful atropin is derived from it, besides 

 another alkaloid, the belladonnin. 



Avena elatior, Linne. 



Europe, Middle Asia, North Africa. This tall grass should 

 not be passed altogether on this occasion, although it becomes 

 easily irrepressible on account of its wide-creeping roots. It 

 should here be chosen for dry and barren tracts of country, 

 it having proved to resist occasional droughts even better than 

 Rye-Grass. The bulk yielded by it is great ; it submits well 



