310 GENUS ATRIPLEX. 



this case plainly perennial and suffrutescent, as described by Jepson. Other collections 

 include plants with decidedly woody stems up to 4 mm. in diameter. The only specimens 

 of this extreme woody form are Jepson's plants from Wilson Creek, Solano County, 

 September 30, 1893. It is remarkable that all recent collections are of plants in which 

 the leafy stems are spreading or prostrate, and herbaceous throughout except at the 

 very base, where they are attached to a more or less woody crown. Although normally 

 a perennial, A. fruticulosa flowers and seeds in the first season, at least under garden 

 conditions. These one-year-old plants are herbaceous throughout. 



ECOLOGY AND USES. 



A triplex fruticulosa grows more or less copiously in alkaline flats of the Great Valley 

 of Cahfornia, usually associated with Distichlis. It has become ruderal to some extent, 

 where it is found on railway embankments. The plants flower most abundantly in 

 midsummer, but bloom in some degree from March to November. 



This species is much relished by cattle and sheep, and is kept grazed down to a mat- 

 like form, but it is not large enough to be of importance as a rule. 



32. ATRIPLEX COULTERI (Moquin) Dietrich, Syn. PI. 5:537, 1852. Plate 48. 



Spreading perennial herb, 1 to 3 dm. high, the stems sometimes 10 dm. long, branched 

 from the base; branches slender, terete, not grooved or striate, sparsely furfuraceous, 

 glabrate, stramineous or sometimes reddish, the bark pale and persistent but splitting 

 near the base of the stems; leaves all alternate, on short petioles or the upper ones 

 sessile, narrowly elliptic, narrowly oblong or lanceolate, tapering at base, acute at apex, 

 1 to 2 cm. long, 0.2 to 0.4 cm. wide, entire, rather thin, gray with a close fine scurf or 

 slightly greenish above, soft, 1 -nerved; flowers monoecious, the staminate glomerules 

 in a few upper axils and in terminal spikes less than 3 cm. long, the pistillate flowers 

 in small clusters in the upper leaf-axils, a few sometimes in the lower staminate clusters; 

 perianth 5-cleft in the staminate flowers, wanting in the pistillate; fruiting bracts sessile 

 or subsessile, moderately compressed, united to the middle, obovate but with narrowed 

 summit, 2.5 to 3 mm. long and about as broad, sharply dentate from the middle upwards, 

 the sides with 3 prominent raised longitudinal nerves or these obscure (as in the tjrpe 

 specimen), also with cross- veinlets and a few sharp tubercles or the tubercles wanting 

 (as in the type); seed 1.3 to 1.5 mm. long, brown; radicle superior. {Obione coulteri 

 Moquin in DeCandoUe, Prodr. 13^:113, 1849.) 



Coast of southern California, including the adjacent islands, probably also in northern 

 Lower California. Type locality, California. Collections: Type collection, Coulter 

 (fragment in Herb. Gray, ex-herb. Hooker); Bixby, Los Angeles County, Brandegee 

 (UC); Gardena, Los Angeles County, Braunton 265 (US); Catalina Island, Macbride 

 and Payson 870 (Gr); Avalon, Santa Catalina Island, common at a single locality at 

 450 m. altitude, March, 1898, Trask (US); Chino Creek, south of Ontario, San Ber- 

 nardino County, Johnston 1275 (UC); Trabuco Canon, near Capistrano, Orange Coimty, 

 Abrams 3270 (DS, Gr, UC); La JoUa, San Diego County, Grant (UC); San Diego, 

 near the shore, May, 1878, Cleveland (Gr). 



RELATIONSHIPS. 



This species is very closely connected with A. fruticulosa, but each has certain features 

 so highly specialized that both are retained in specific rank. One belongs to the coastal 

 slope of southern California, the other to the interior valleys of the same State. Neither 

 the ranges nor the characters fully meet. The present species exhibits the greater 

 reduction in the size of the fruiting bracts and seed and often also in the staminate 



