A. SEMIBACCATA — A. HALIMOIDES. 263 



USES. 



This species was introduced into America by the California Experiment Station in 

 1888 as a forage and hay plant for alkaline districts. Its cultivation was extended to all 

 of the warmer parts of the State as rapidly as seed became available, and for more than 

 a decade it was in high favor with stockmen, since it grew readily on land too poor for 

 other crops. Although now much less highly prized, it is still useful as an adjunct to 

 other browse and forage plants, especially for the purpose of carrying stock through unfa- 

 vorable seasons. When other feed is plentiful, most animals avoid the Australian 

 saltbush, as it is commonly known. Aside from its forage value for hogs, sheep, cattle, 

 and horses, the foliage and seeds are eaten by poultry. In establishing the plant, the 

 best results are obtained by first plowing and harrowing the land, after which the seed 

 is sown broadcast or drilled, preferably just before a rain. The seed is regularly carried 

 in stock by California seedsmen. The plants are killed by temperatures of about 14° F. 

 and therefore can not be grown in cold regions. Further details and analyses are given 

 in the reports and bulletins of the California Experiment Station (see especially Bull. 

 125, 1899). Analyses are given also by Headden (Colo. Exp. Sta. Bull, 135, 1908), who 

 concludes with the following statement of facts, which he considers to have been estab- 

 lished for this plant : 



"First, when once established it will endure drought and even make a good crop with less than 5 in. of rain- 

 fall. Second, that stock will eat it or readily learn to eat it either green or as hay. Third, that it will produce 

 very heavily under favorable conditions. Fourth, that it will, when fed alone, maintain the animals, and even 

 better results are claimed for it. Fifth, that the hay is rich in protein, as rich or even richer than alfalfa. 

 Sixth, that its coefficients of digestion are excellent, except for the fat or ether extract and crude fiber. Seventh, 

 that it has no injurious effects on the animals even when they have no other fodder with it. The following 

 facts, however, remain, that it has not become popular, and that when fed alone it does not produce the results 

 that its composition and coefficients of digestion would seem to warrant us in expecting." 



The most recent bulletin dealing with the culture and uses of this species in North 

 America is one by McKee (U. S. Dept. Agr. Bull. 617, 1919). 



The Australian saltbush is of economic interest also as a host plant for Eutettix tenella, 

 the insect that carries the disease of the sugar-beet known as curly-top (see under A. 

 bracteosa, p. 307). It is especially important in the Imperial Valley, California, where 

 it serves to carry the insect over the autumn. Other autumn host plants are here almost 

 wanting, so that if it were not for this Atriplex, the Eutettix would be much less plentiful 

 or perhaps not able to persist. 



8. ATRIPLEX HALIMOIDES Lindley, in Mitchell, Three Exped. East. Austral. 1:285, 1838. 



Plate 39. 



Erect spreading or procumbent perennial subshrub or herb, 1.5 to 4 dm. high; branches 

 brittle, not angled, at first slightly white-mealy but soon glabrate and pale; leaves alter- 

 nate, crowded, petioled, oblanceolate to rhomboid with a much narrowed base, acute at 

 apex, 1 to 3 cm. long, 0.3 to 1.5 cm. wide, remotely repand-dentate or some entire, rather 

 thin, white with a fine dense mealy scurf or less scurfy and greenish, 1 -nerved; flowers 

 monoecious, the staminate in short spikes in the upper axils, the pistillate solitary or in 

 few-flowered clusters in the axils below; perianth 5-cleft in the staminate flowers, wanting 

 in the pistillate; fruiting bracts sessile, not compressed but loose and spongy, the open 

 tissue held together by strong web-like fibers, broadly turbinate or nearly hemispheric 

 with a much depressed or flattened summit (apparently globoid in some pressed speci- 

 mens), 6 to 12 mm. in diameter, united except at the minute valve-like apical tips, 

 sparsely scurfy; seeds of 2 sorts, one kind 1.5 mm. long and dark reddish-brown, the other 

 slightly smaller and black ; radicle inferior. 



Introduced from Australia; incompletely naturalized in southern California. Type 

 locality, eastern Australia. Collections: Cockatoo Ranch, near El Nido, San Diego 

 County, California, Abrams 3527 (DS, Gr, NY, UC, US). 



