Halimus.] chenopodiace^. 427 



late flowers very much enlarged in fruit, thin (not, as in most others of the genus, 

 fleshy), when fully ripe dry, whitish, memhianous and reticulated with prominent 

 veins, very broadly ovale or nearly oibiciilar, rounded or slightly pointed, with 

 flat compressed margins, which are quite entire and closely applied to each other; 

 somewhat convex at the back, and whcdly without tubercular prominences or ine- 

 qualities of any kind, entirely free (not imbedded in fleshy tissue) or distinct and 

 subpedicellate. Seed large, vertical, orbicular, much compressed, quite free. 



VII. Halimus, Wallroth. Sea Purslane. 



" Perigone of two parts connected at the extremity, 3-dentate, 

 wedge-shaped below. Stigmas 2. Pericarp very thm, ultimately 

 adhering to the tube of the perigone. Testa membranous. Seed 

 vertical, pendulous from an elongated funiculus. Radicle termi- 

 nal. Stamens 5."- — Bab. Man. 



Shrubs or small trees of maritime or saline soils, rarely of inland or mountain 

 localities.* 



1. H. portulacoides, Wallr.. Lesser Shrubby Orache. Sea 

 Purslane. Stem shrubby, leaves obovato-lanceolate entire sil- 

 very white, perianth of the fruit very shortly stalked inversely 

 triangular rounded below 3-toothed at the apex. Atriplex, L. : 

 Br. FL p. 347. E.B.t.2ei. Ohione, Mog. Guimb. und Hayne, 

 Abbild. der Devtsch. ii. 277, t. 209. , Fl. Dan. xi. t. 1889. 



In muddy salt-marshes, along the oozy sides of tide-rivers, ditches and creeks, 

 also on sea-clifFs; abundantly, i^/. August, September, /^r. November. Tj . 



E. Med. — Muddy banks of the Wootton river, 1845. [By the sea-wall at 

 Apley, and on the muddy shore of Brading harbour, frequent. Dr. Bell-Sailer, 

 Edrs.] 



W. Med. — Banks of the Medina above Cowes, in plenty. Fringes the edges 

 of the brine-pits in the salt-marshes about Newtown. Chalk-cliffs at the W. end 

 of Scratchell's bay, at a great elevation. In Gurnet bay, abundantly, but of small 

 growth. 



Root woody, somewhat creeping (Sm). Stem shrubby, roundish, covered with a 

 reddish gray bark, much branched, the branches angular, opposite, ascending or 

 procumbent, often depending from a low bank, as a dense tangled bush, about a 

 foot or 18 inches high. Leaves opposite, with mostly a pair or two of smaller 

 ones in their axils, various in breadth, obovato-lanceolate, more or less rounded or 

 obtuse at their extremity, the lowermost nearly ovate, tapering into channelled 

 footstalks, of a thick fleshy texture, hoary on both sides with a leaden-gray leprous 

 scaliness, but not with detached grains or mealiness as in the true Atriplices. 

 Flower-spikes terminal and in the axils of the uppermost leaves only, short, leaf- 

 less, each of several little, interrupted, sessile tufts of crowded brownish or red- 

 dish yellow barren and fertile flowers : fertile flowers reddish, the calyx much 

 thickened; styles 2, erect, pale red and downy, protruded: barren flowers all with 



* The Great Shrubby Orache (Halimus, — Atriplex Halimus, Linn.), so frequent 

 in our English gardens and pleasure-grounds, I observed to be plentiful in the 

 wild stale in Syria and Palestine, and that, to my surprise, not merely on the sea- 

 coast or iu low" salt ground, but abundantly likewise on dry limestone mountains 

 of Judsa, and in the parched rocky valleys that intersect them, at a great eleva- 

 tion above the sea, as well as at their base. It abounds, for instance, on the east- 

 ern slope of the hills between Jerusalem and the Dead Sea, on the way thither 

 both by Jericho and Mar Saba, but it is only on the low saline plains and by the 

 sea-side that it attains its amplest dimensions, as on the flat salt ground between 

 Jericho and the Jordan, and at Jaff'a, where it forms bushes often of immense size. 



