174 



CHEXnPoDIACE.K. 



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. Nitrophila. 



Leaves all or mostly alternate. 

 Leaves plane, membranaceous, or fleshy. 

 Flowers perfect; calyx 5-cleft or -parted. 



Ovary partly inferior 2. Beta. 



Ovary superior 3. Chenopodium. 



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



4. Roubieva. 



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



none, the pistil enclosed by 2"bracts * . 5. Atriplex. 



Leaves subterete, linear; flowers perfect or gyno-monoecious 



8. SU.EDA. 



Leaves reduced to mere scales; flowers perfect, immersed by o's in the 

 depressions of a fleshy cylindrical spike and 

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



fleshy jointed stems 7. Salicornia. 



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

 branchlets ".6. Allenroi.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 persistent style, included within the connivent sepals. (Greek 

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

 alkaline soils.) 



1. N. occidental is 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, chartaceous, 1 line long, carinate and concave, especially 

 the 2 inner; stamens J the length of the sepals and opposite them; 

 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 San 

 Joaquin Valley, where it is common. 



