Forage Plants of Australia. 81 



ORDER CHEXOPODIACE^E. 



CHEXOLEA DALLACHYANA, BEXTII. 



" Dallachy'B Saltbush." 

 Flora Austr., Vol. V,p. 191. 



Ax underslirub usually growing about 1 foot high. The branches are 

 clothed with a cottony wool, which gives it the appearance of having had 

 that substance placed artificially on it. Its leaves are sessile, linear, obtuse, 

 thick, soft, densely tomentose, and about a i of an inch long. 



The flowers are mostly solitary, but crowded into terminal leafy spikes, as 

 shown in the detached branch of the engraving. The fruiting perianths are 

 nearly globular, membranous, and densely woolly tomentose. This plant 

 is peculiar to the plains and sandhills between the Murray and Darling 

 Rivers in New South Wales, but it is not very plentiful anywhere. It 

 endures drought to a marked degree. The indumentum (covering) of 

 the plant (which is also a characteristic of many plants on our central 

 plains) no doubt protects it against the high temperature during summer, 

 and also against the other extreme in winter, when the thermometer often 

 registers frost. It is a capital forage plant, which sheep and other small 

 herbivora eat down greedily. Its thick soft leaves, which are slightly 

 salinous in taste, are a particular " relish," when the surrounding grasses are 

 somewhat dried up during the extreme heat of summer. Like nearly all 

 its congeners, it is a plant well worthy of conservation, for it will make 

 growth even during the driest seasons when herbage is most wanted on 

 the central plains. The plant produces a fair amount of seed when left 

 unmolested, and the seeds germinate readily under ordinary conditions. 



There are about six species of the genus Chenolea indigenous in Australia, 

 and all of them are peculiar to the arid central plains of the continent. 

 They are good drought-resisting plants, and are capital forage for stock 

 when other feed becomes somewhat scarce during adverse seasons. 



