A. JULACEA — ^A. HTMENELYTRA. 333 



Valley, California, where it occupies extensive areas too hot and arid for other shrubs, 

 it serves as browse for large numbers of sheep while these are being moved from one 

 range to another. In such places, where all feed is at a premium, the shrubs are often 

 stripped of their scant foliage and many plants finally die as a result of repeated browsing. 

 In some portions of the Lost Hills district over 50 per cent of the plants have been killed, 

 presumably because of this. Atriplex poly car pa is regarded by Severin as the most 

 important of the shrubby food-plants of Eutettix. Like most species of the genus, it 

 may be an occasional cause of hay-fever. 



41. ATRIPLEX JULACEA Watson, Proc. Am. Acad. 20:370, 1885. Plate 52. 



Procumbent subshrub with ascending or erect crowded slender twigs, these only 

 slightly woody; branches (2 to 6 dm. long) slender, not angled, gray-scurfy or glabrate, 

 the bark thick brown and corky on old basal portions; leaves crowded and sometimes 

 imbricate on the branchlets, alternate, closely sessile by a sagittate-clasping base, 

 ovate-triangular, usually sulcate by the folding back of the margins, obtuse at apex, 

 0.2 to 0.4 cm. long, 0.1 to 0.2 cm. wide, entire, thick, gray with a dense permanent 

 scurf, l-nerved; flowers dioecious, solitary or in few-flowered axillary glomerules; perianth 

 cleft in the staminate flowers, wanting in the pistillate; fruiting bracts sessile, not com- 

 pressed, united to above the middle, ovate, 4 to 6 mm. long, about as broad, the surface 

 covered with irregular corky appendages; seed about 1 mm. long, reddish-brown ; radicle 

 superior. 



Pacific Coast of Lower California from near the northern boundary to San Gregorio. 

 Type locaHty, Todos Santos Bay. Collections, all from Lower California: Type col- 

 lection, September 30, 1884, Orcutt (Or); Todos Santos Island, March 9, 1897, Brandegee 

 (UC); Ensenada, Jones 3737 (NY, US); Sauzal, April 11, 1885, Orcutt (Gr, US); Cape 

 San Quentin, May 10, 1885, Greene (DS, US); San Quentin Bay, Palmer 726 (Gr, NY, 

 US); San Telmo, May 31, 1893, Brandegee (UC); Socorro, May, 1889, Brandegee (UC); 

 Natividad Island, Anthony 365 (DS, UC); San Bartolome Bay, April 12, 1897, Brandegee 

 (UC); Point Abreojos, Rose 16252 (US); San Gregorio, April 6, 1889, Brandegee (UC). 



RELATIONSHIPS. 



Watson's statement following the original description that this species is related to 

 A . polycarpa is borne out by all of the evidence assembled from more recent collections. 

 It is less woody than that and therefore seems to stand between it and the subshrubby 

 Atriplexes hke A. barclayana. But it is more woody than descriptions lead one to believe. 

 Sometimes the hard stems are 3 mm. thick and some herbarium specimens indicate 

 that the principal stems are sometimes erect from a very short spreading base {Anthony 

 365). Such specimens look very much like young plants of A. polycarpa. A. julacea 

 is well set off from all other species by the minute and sagittate-clasping leaves. 

 ECOLOGY AND USES. 



Nothing is known regarding the ecology of this plant, aside from the fact that it 

 forms low, tangled masses in the proximity of the sea. It has no uses as far as known. 



42. ATRIPLEX HYMENELYTR A (Torrey) Watson, Proc. Am. Acad. 9:119, 1874. 

 Plate 53. Hollyscale; Desert Holly. 



Erect compactly branched shrub, woody throughout, of rounded outline when normally 

 developed, 3 to 10 dm. high and broad; branches not striate, white with a dense and long- 

 persisting scurf; the bark rough and gray on old basal portions; leaves numerous, per- 

 sistent, alternate, on petioles 5 to 10 mm. long, orbicular or round-ovate, truncate 

 subcordate or short-cuneate at the base, obtuse at apex, the blade 1.5 to 3 cm. long and 

 about as wide, deeply and irregularly dentate with salient sharp teeth, thick, silvery- 



