- 89 — 



twisted like a screw and with several rows of long many- 

 pronged bristles spread out in every direction and quite stiff 

 when ripe. The fruit thus appears as a kernel set in the 

 midst of a globular transparent meshwork, the diameter of 

 the whole being 2 — 3 cm. (See fig. 28). These fruits are exceed- 

 ingly mobile and roll away at the slightest breath of wind. 



The fruit of Eremosparton is a one-seeded woolly-haired 

 pod, one centimetre long. The red blossoms open in May 

 or June and form small racemes, but only the earlier blos- 

 soms set fruit as the later ones are shrivelled up by 

 the heat. 



Saxaul or Sasak [Haloxylon Ammodendron) (fig. 14) only 

 thrives well where the sand has a subsoil of clay or limestone. 

 Under favourable conditions it may become a tree of 7 metres. 

 Often, however, it is a much-branched shrub. As the growth 

 is slow, this species does not stand sand-drift very well, and 

 the young, soft, leafless shoots are also bruised and damaged 

 by the sand-grains'). 



These switch trees and bushes have the following cha- 

 racters in common (other details of morphology and internal 

 structure are given in chap. 13). They are small trees or 

 bushes; the Sand -Acacia and Saxaul occasionally become 

 larger trees (8 metres). 



All of them have their leaves much reduced. Ammoden- 

 dron has flat leaves, but they are small and thickly coated 

 with silky hairs. The Salsola species have cylindrical cheno- 

 podiaceous leaves with central water-tissue. In Calligoniim, 

 Eremosparton and Haloxylon the leaves are reduced to small 

 scales, and the assimilatory functions are performed by the 

 stems alone. 



The first-year shoots are frequently branched, sometimes 



') Saxaul is said to form vast bushlands ("forest", comp. Lipsky above 

 p. 28) east of Lalce Aral (Wladimirskaja). Tlie trees here are said to attain 

 a lieiglit of 16 — 18 feet and liave a thick tap-root. Saxaul often occurs here 

 together with rushes and is supposed to stand in a certain relation to the 

 Syr Darya (Jaxartes) inundation area. "The Saxaul forests everywhere begin as 

 a low thorny scrub along with Tamarisks, then they become bushlands and 

 finally forests." (Middendorff p. 308). — Lipsky (1911 p. 14) denies that the 

 growth of Saxaul is necessarily slow. 



