3 06 CHKNOPODIACELE. (GOOSEFOOT FAMILY. ^ 



Order 65. CHENOPODIACEJB. (Goosefoot Family.) 



Herbs or shrubs, often succulent or scurfy, usually with simple and 

 alternate leaves, without stipules; the small and sessile commonly clus- 

 tered flowers either naked or with herbaceous (not scarious) bracts, a 

 perianth of 5 or fewer usually herbaceous and persistent sepals; stamens 

 as many as the sepals and opposite, distinct, with 2-celled anthers; 

 ovary 1 -celled, an akene or utricle in fruit. Flowers perfect or unisexual. 

 Bracts often enclosing the fruit. — Watson, Proc. Am. Acad. ix. 82. 



§ 1. Flowers perfect, without bracts ; the perianth persistent : seed free, mostly with 



crustaceous testa. 



* Seeds horizontal (sometimes vertical in Chenopodium). 



1. Kochia. Perianth 5-cleft, at length transversely winged, enclosing the fruit Testa 



membranous. Perennial, with terete leaves and axillary fiowers. 



2. Cyclolonia. Perianth 5-cleft* in fruit surrounded by a horizontal continuous mem- 



branaceous wing. Annual, much-branched, with sinuate-toothed petioled leaves and 

 small panicled clusters of sessile flowers. 



3. Chenopodium. Perianth usually 5-cleft or -parted, nearly covering the fruit Sta- 



mens 5, 1, or none. Annuals, mostly mealy or glandular, with clustered or solitary 

 axillary or terminal flowers. Seeds often vertical. 

 * * Seeds vertical. 



4. Monolepis. Sepal 1, bract-like. Stamen 1. Fruit naked. Low annuals ; flowere 



densely clustered in the axils. 



§ 2. Flowers monoecious or dioecious; the staminate with 3 to 5-cleft perianth ; the pis- 

 tillate without perianth, enclosed in a pair of more or less united bracts : seed free, 

 vertical. 



* Bracts compressed : testa mostly coriaceous. 



5. Atriplex. Fruiting bracts with margins often dilated and sides often muricate. Radi- 



cle from inferior to superior. 



* * Bracts obcompressed, completely united, not muricate : testa membranous. 



6. Grayia. Pericarp naked, very entire, orbicular, flattened, wing-margined. Radicle 



inferior. Flowers dioecious. Shrubby, frequently spinesceut, nearly glabrous. 



7. Suckleya. Pericarp naked, subhastate, with crested margins and 2-toothed apex. 



Radicle superior. Flowers monoecious. 



8. Eurotia. Pericarp conical, densely hairy, turgid, not winged, with a bifid apex Radi- 



cle inferior. Flowers dioecious. Low and shrubby, white-tomentose. 



§ 3. Flowers perfect, without bracts : sepals 1 to 3, hyaline, marcescent : pericarp adhe- 

 rent to the vertical seed. 



9. Corisperrnurn. Fruit compressed-elliptic, acutely margined, not muricate. Flowers 



spicate. Low annual. 



§ 4. Flowers mostly perfect, immersed by threes in the depressions of a close cylindrical 

 spike : seeds vertical : fleshy saline plants, with jointed stems and scale-like leaves. 



10. Salicornia. Flower-clusters decussately opposite. Perianth saccate, becuining 



spongy. Branches opposite. 



§ 5. Embryo spiral (annular in all other sections): leaves fleshy, terete : stems not articu- 

 lated. 



11. Sarcobatus. Flowers unisexual; the staminate in aments, without perianth; the 



pistillate axillary, solitary, with saccate perianth. Fruit transversely winged. Saline 

 shrub, somewhat spinescent 



12. Suseda. Flowers perfect, axillary. Perianth 5-cleft or -parted. Saline herbs, or 



woody at base. 



