174 CHENOPODIACEiE. 



26. CHENOPODIACE/E. Goosefoot Family. 



Herbs or shrubs, very often succulent or scurfy, with alternate or 

 rarely opposite leaves, or leafless. Flowers perfect or unisexual, 

 with an herbaceous calyx of 5 or fewer sepals, or in the pistillate 

 flower the calyx sometimes absent. Stamens as many as the sepals, 

 and opposite them or fewer, distinct. Ovary superior, 1-celled, 

 containing a single ovule, becoming in fruit an achene or utricle; 

 embryo annular and surrounding the mealy endosperm, or spiral and 

 the endosperm lateral or wanting. Nitrophila has a scarious calyx 

 and stamens not distinct. 



Stems leafy. 

 Leaves all opposite; flowers perfect; stamens united at base into a perigynous 



disk 1. NlTEOPHILA. 



Leaves all or mostly alternate. 

 Leaves plane, membranaceous, or fleshy. 

 Flowers perfect; calyx 6~cleft or -parted. 



Ovary partly inferior 2. Beta. 



Ovary superior 3. Chenopodium. 



Flowers perfect or pistillate; calyx urceolate, 3 to 5-toothed 



4. EOUBIEVA. 



Flowers unisexual; staminate calyx 4 or 5-parted; calyx of fertile flower 



none, the pistil enclosed by 2 bracts 5. Ateiplex. 



Leaves subterete, linear; flowers perfect or gyno-moncecious 



8. Sna;DA. 

 Leaves reduced to mere scales; flowers perfect, Immersed by 3's in the 

 depressions of a fleshy cylindrical spike and 

 Decussately opposite; penanth bladder-like; herbaceous plant with stout 



fleshy jointed stems 7. Salicoknia. 



Spirally arranged; perianth 4 to 5-oleft; shrub with fleshy jointed alternate 

 branchlets . . .6. Allekeoi.fea. 



1. NITROPHILA Wats. 

 A low perennial glabrous herb with fleshy opposite amplexicaul 

 leaves and axillary perfect flowers. Calyx of 5 (rarely 6 or 7) equal 

 erect concave and carinate sepals. Stamens equal in number, united 

 at base into a, narrow yellowish disk. Style larger than the sub- 

 globose ovary; stigmas 2. Utricle 1-seeded, indehiscent, beaked by 

 the peTsistent style, included within the connivent sepals. (Greek 

 nitron, carbonate of soda, and philos, fond of, these plants loving 

 alkaline soils.) 



1. N. occidentalis Wats. Stems decumbent, 4 to 11 in. long, 

 dichotomously branched, the internodes mostly very short; leaves 

 linear, sessile, the lower 1 in., the floral mostly 3 to 6 lines long, 

 triangular, mucronate; flowers solitary in the axils of the opposite 

 leaves and bibracteate, or often 2 to 3 with the central one frequently 

 bractless and the lateral often pedicellate; sepals imbricated, pinkish 

 or whitish, chartaoeous, 1 line long, carinate and concave, especially 

 tl).e 2 inner; stamens J the length of the sepals and opposite tbem; 

 ovule attached to base of ovary on a long funiculus. 



Kare in our limits; alkaline springs, base of the Pelejo Hills, 

 Solano Co., where it is^ nearly extinct; southward through the Sau 

 Joaquin Vallc}', where it is common. 



