446 
EXPLORATIONS ACROSS THE GREAT BASIN OF UTAH. 
Torrey in Fremont 7 s First Report, 1843, Rept. 1845, p. 95, and Fremont 7 s Second Report, 
1845, p. 317 p tab. 3; Sarcacanthus, Nuttall in PI Garnbel, p. 184; Sarcobatus vermicu- 
laris, Torrey in Sitgr. Rep. p. 169, in Stansb. Rep. p. 394, in Rot. Whipple, p. 130;* 
Pulpy Thorn or Pulpy-leaved Thorn of Lewis and Clarke; Greasewood of the present 
travelers and settlers. 
This curious and important plant is found on the arid saline plains, principally on 
clayey soil, which in the wet season is moist, and on the border of salt-lakes, often covering 
large patches, from below Fort Pierre on the Missouri (Dr. Hayden ) to the Upper 
Platte River {Fremont, H. Fngelmann), and Upper Canadian {Dr. James) east of the 
Rocky Mountains to-the plains of the Columbia {Lewis and Clarke, Douglas, Fremont), 
Utah ( Fremont, Stansbury) through the Basin to Carson Valley {H. Fngelmann) and 
down to the Gila River {Emory). Though discovered and noticed by Lewis and Clarke 
(1804) and collected by Dr. James (1819), this shrub was first described, 1840, by 
Hooker, in his North American Flora, from Oregon specimens, and was doubtfully 
referred by him to Batis. A few years -later, it was again described by Nees in his 
account of the plants collected by the Prince of Neu Wied as a new genus under the 
name of Sarcobatus, and very soon afterward, and .without a knowledge of the publica¬ 
tion by Nees, again by Torrey under that of Fremontia. It is a great pity that this 
last name had to give way to priority, though at present a much handsomer and showy 
Californian shrub bears Fremont’s name, the wide-spread Greasewood of the western 
mountains and deserts would more fitly have commemorated the bold and hardy pioneer 
of explorers to the millions, who now" do or in time to come will know and value this 
plant. 
The Greasewood forms a scraggy, stunted shrub, 2 or 3 to as much as 6 or 8 
feet high; in Utah, it is commonly 3-4 feet high. The stems are scarcely ever more 
than 1 or 2 and rarely 3 inches thick, knotty, flattened, twisted, and often with irregu¬ 
lar ridges and holes (the scars of decayed branches); sometimes, however, many straight 
shoots issue from a single base, inch thick, so straight as to be used for arrows. 
They are covered with a compact, smoothish or slightly roughened, light-gray bark. 
The wood is very hard and compact, of light-yellow, in the core light-brownish, color, 
with very thin annual layers, in younger plants about in older ones J of a line or 
less thick. The oldest stems seen showed 20-25 rather indistinct rings, and were con¬ 
sequently so many years old. The numerous smaller branches have a smooth, shining, 
white bark, and are beset with white spines at right angles; these spines are indurated 
branches of two kinds. The sharper and shorter ones are real spines, scarcely ever 
more than Jr-1 inch long; they bear leaves only, or, in the axils of these, female flowers, 
and are terminated by a sharp point and never by a staminate spike. The other spines 
are branchlets which did bear such a terminal spike, which, after flowering, has fallen 
away; they are 1-2 inches long, sometimes even longer, when they are apt to bear 
also lateral spines. The flower-bearing branches are very often secondary axillary 
productions closely under the sterile primary branch, which constitutes the spine, so 
that the spines often appear as axillary to the flower-bearing branches. The leaves are 
thick and pulpy, linear, or often narrowed toward the .base, flattened or even slightly- 
* Compare S. Watson’s Revision of the American Chenopodiacese in Proc. Am, Ac. Arts §c. vol. 9, p. 82 (1875). 
