280 GENUS ATRIPLEX. 



5-cleft (as far as known), wanting in the pistillate; fruiting bracts long- or short-stalked 

 or sessile, compressed, united to the summit, the body elliptic, but the whole bract 

 orbicular through the development of marginal wings wider than the body, or these 

 margins developing only above and the bract then oblong, 10 to 16 mm. long and broad, 

 entire or undulate, the sides seldom appendaged, very sparsely scurfy, the midvein prom- 

 inent and the reticulations of the margins sometimes evident ; seed 3 mm. long, dull- white ; 

 radicle superior. 



Known only from Utah. Type locality, Blue Valley, near the Henry Mountains. 

 Collections, all in Utah: type collection, 1,220 m. altitude, in clay, July 30, 1894, Jones 

 5697 (Herb. Jones, NY, R); Cainville, 1,370 m. altitude, Jones 5656e (according to Jones, 

 1. c.) ; Price, September, 1888, Jones (Herb. Jones, many of the bracts with wings nar- 

 rowed below the middle) ; near Moab, June 16, 1913, Jones (Gr) ; Emery, 2,140 m. altitude, 

 Jones 5US (UC); foot of Book Cliffs, 16 km. north of Green River, Hall 110^2 (UC); 

 near Bear Creek ranger station, Manti Forest, Utah, Willey 284. (District Forest Herb. 

 Ogden). 



RELATIONSHIPS. 



This species is too little known to justify positive statements as to its phylogeny. 

 Jones has suggested a rank close to A. canescens, probably because of the remarkable 

 wings to the bracts. But these wings are only expansions of the margins and there are 

 no additional wing-like outgrowths from the middle line of each bract, as occurs in 

 canescens. The herbaceous and monoecious habit, as well as all features of foliage and 

 flowers, also indicates an absence of any direct connection. The shape of the bracts is 

 very similar to that of A. elegans, but otherwise these two are very unlike. 



A. graciliflora is more probably an offshoot from the argentea-truncata-saccaria line 

 and is now restricted to peculiar soils where no other species can grow. Thus, it has 

 become a relict without direct connections. It is more like saccaria than any of the other 

 species, the similarity in habit, foliage, and inflorescence, being very close. Even the 

 fruiting bracts are similar in shape when the wing fails to develop in graciliflora. How- 

 ever, even under these conditions the bracts are never strictly cuneate and they do not 

 have the narrow terminal border of that species. The seed especially is unlike, being 

 much larger and pale in color, a peculiarity that distinguishes graciliflora also from 

 all other members of its group. 



ECOLOGY AND USES. 



Atriplex graciliflora resembles A. saccaria so closely that it appears to be a recent and 

 local development of this, which has retained the vegetative structure and ecologic habits 

 practically in their entirety. It forms small famiUes in clay soils, and hence regularly 

 grows in the Mancos and Mesa Verde shales of eastern Utah, where it behaves essentially 

 like saccaria in habit and grouping. This species has no uses. 



20. ATRIPLEX SACCARIA Watson, Proc. Am. Acad. 9:112, 1874. Plate 43. Twoscale. 



Erect annual herb, 1 to 3 or 5 dm. high, copiously branched throughout to form a 

 dense globoid bushy plant; branches stout, angled, roughly furfuraceous, glabrate only 

 at the end of the season, the bark then white and cracking into flakes; leaves mostly 

 alternate, all decidedly petiolate or the upper ones subsessile, broadly cordate-ovate or 

 subreniform, cordate or some only broadly truncate at base, acute at apex, 1 to 3 cm. 

 long exclusive of petiole, 1 to 2.5 cm. wide, entire, thick when fresh but drying thin, gray 

 or nearly white with a rough scurf, rarely glabrate, the veins and reticulations prominent; 

 flowers monoecious, the staminate glomerules in the upper axils and in open terminal 

 panicles (these often lost in mature plants), the pistillate all axillary; perianth of stam- 



