ra 
The more important hemicryptophytic summer-plants are 
some halophytes which will be dealt with below. 
Anabasis eriopoda (C. A. M.). 
This species is common in very dry clay- and stone- 
deserts. It has a very characteristic appearance as will be 
seen from figures 58 and 59. The year-shoots measure 30 
cm. long or even more, and arise from a white woolly 
cushion which lies in the uppermost crust of soil. The leaves 
are reduced to small opposite scales, which on older branches 
terminate in rather long slender spines; in their axils many 
white woolly hairs occur. 
The lower leaf-axils of the year-shoots are branchless. 
but the upper ones all bear branches. The more vigorous 
branches give rise to new ones so that a tangle of branches 
results towards the top (fig. 58). All the 
aerial shoots are annual. 
The two lowermost leaves of each shoot 
are embedded in the cushion whence all the 
shoots issue, they are very short, but have 
long apical spines (fig. 59), and their leaf- 
axils are very woolly. The woolly cushion 
must be formed by the hairs in the lower 
leaf-axils of successive shoots, and my obser- 
vations indicate that the shoots arise in these 
very leaf-axils, though not conclusive enough 
to prove this positively. 
The small inconspicuous flowers open in 
July, and the fruits which are fleshy and not 
RR covered by the perianth ripen during Sep- 
a cushion with tember or October. 
FE ee The anatomy of the shoots is shown 
in fig. 60. The epidermis is very thick con- 
sisting of three layers; inside it is a thin-walled “crystal 
layer’ which is, however, interrupted in many places. The 
ordinary layers of palisades are present, likewise a starch- 
sheath and an aqueous tissue. 
