Vegetation Around Las Vegas, Fourwing Saltbush (Atriplex canescens)

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Fourwing Saltbush (Atriplex canescens)
Shrubs Around Las Vegas, Vegetation Around Las Vegas

General: Fourwing Saltbush (Atriplex canescens) is a rounded shrub with long, narrow gray-green, glandular leaves that are densely white-scaly. The leaves are also folded down the center. Plants are male or female (dioecious). Female plants in fruit are easy to recognize because the fruit has four large scales (the wings).

Fourwing Saltbush is a fairly common or dominant component of shrub communities on alkaline and saline soils around desert playas and on desert flats in the Upper Sonoran (Mojave Desert Scrub) life zone. Fourwing Saltbush is also a fairly common in shrub communities on desert bajadas.

Male plant with flowers

Family: Amaranthaceae. Formerly Goosefoot (Chenopodiaceae).

Other Names: Shad-scale, Shadscale

Plant Form: Rounded shrub.

Height: To about 6-feet high.

Bark: Silver gray.

Stems: Erect; many branches, ascending and spreading. Lateral branches may bear spines at the tip.

Leaves: 1/3 to 2 inches long, narrow; white-scaly with bead-like hairs; alternate; groove down the center; somewhat fleshy. Young leaves are covered with scales. Mature leaves have epidermal trichomes (hairlike epidermal outgrowths) that concentrate and exude salts, and on saline sites leaves become covered with a salty covering or scurf.

Dry seeds (ripe) on a female plant

Flowers: Staminate flowers are borne in dense, 2- to 3-mm-wide spikes. Pistillate flowers form 5- to 40-cm long panicles. individual flowers small and inconspicuous.

Seeds: 1.5 to 2.5 mm, enclosed in two papery bracts that grow at right angles and form a somewhat spherical structure around the seed.

Habitat: Dry, poorly to well-drained sandy, gravelly, alkaline, and saline soils on flats and bajadas.

Elevation: below about 8,000 feet.

Distribution: Western U.S.

Comments:

Female Fourwing Saltbush plant	Male Fourwing Saltbush plant with female plant in the background
Female Fourwing Saltbush plant	Male Fourwing Saltbush plant
Plants, often tall, can be small and stunted depending on habitat	Plants, often tall, can be small and stunted depending on habitat
Fourwing Saltbush leaves	Fourwing Saltbush leaves
Fourwing Saltbush leaves	Fourwing Saltbush leaves
Fourwing Saltbush leaves white-scaly with bead-like hairs	Fourwing Saltbush leaves white-scaly with bead-like hairs
Fourwing Saltbush leaves tend to be folded along the centerline	Leaves tend to be folded along the centerline, but not always

Female Fourwing Saltbush Plants

Female Fourwing Saltbush plant in fruit	Female Fourwing Saltbush plant in fruit
Female Fourwing Saltbush plant in fruit	Female Fourwing Saltbush plant in fruit
Female plant, developing fruits	Female plant, developing fruits
Female plant, developing fruits	Female Fourwing Saltbush plant, developing fruits
Female Fourwing Saltbush plant, developing fruits	Female Fourwing Saltbush plant, developing fruits
Unripe seeds on a female Fourwing Saltbush plant	Female plant, developing fruits
Dry seeds (ripe) on a female plant	Notice the four bracts on each seed capsule
Four-winged fruit, side view	Four-winged fruit, end view
Fourwing Saltbush four-winged fruit	Fourwing Saltbush four-winged fruit
Fourwing Saltbush four-winged fruit	Fourwing Saltbush four-winged fruit

Male Fourwing Saltbush Plants

Male Fourwing Saltbush plant	Male Fourwing Saltbush plant
Male Fourwing Saltbush flowers	Male Fourwing Saltbush flowers
Male Fourwing Saltbush plant with flowers	Male Fourwing Saltbush plant with flowers
Male Fourwing Saltbush plant with flowers	Male Fourwing Saltbush plant with flowers
Male plant, leaves	Male plant, leaves and staminate flowers
Male plant, leaves and staminate flowers	Male plant, leaves and staminate flowers
Male Fourwing Saltbush plant, staminate flowers	Male Fourwing Saltbush plant, staminate flowers

Note: All distances, elevations, and other facts are approximate. Names generally follow the USDA database.
; Last updated 220810

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