Description :

• Annual or more often perennial herbs, shrubs or subshrubs, glabrous or pubescent; hairs 1- or few-celled, papillose, vesicular, setose or variously branched
• Leaves alternate, rarely opposite, usually semiterete or terete, fleshy, entire, sessile, narrow, often scale-like, sometimes linear-subulate, sometimes amplexicaul at base
• Inflorescences clusters of loose or dense, simple or paniculate spikes, or flowers solitary, bracteate; bracts leaf-like or scaly; bracteoles 2, green at least in upper part, with wide hyaline margins ± enclosing the small flowers, often cucullate
• Flowers axillary, usually bisexual, sessile, protandrous
• Tepals 4 or 5, outer wider than inner, radially veined, each tepal developing in fruit above the middle a scarious horizontally spreading, translucent to opaque, pinkish to pale brown wing
• Stamens 5 or less, antitepalous; filaments band-shaped, fused at ovary base or inserted on outside of disc; anthers linear, oval or sagittate in outline, often with a connective disc; disc thin or thick, often lobed, glabrous, glandular papillose or ciliate; apically with small or large, distinctly shaped appendages
• Ovary globose, depressed or broadly ovoid, narrowed into style; ovule basal, subsessile, suspended from apex of an enlarged funicle; style short or long, thin or thick, rarely 0; stigmas 2, rarely 3
• Fruit usually consisting of a utricle and adnate fruiting perianth, both shed together as an anemophilous diaspore; pericarp membranous or fleshy
• Seed orbicular, with membranous testa, usually horizontal; endosperm almost 0; embryo plano- or conical-spiral, greenish
• x = 9 (high polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Salsola L.
  • Linnaeus: 222 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 104 (1754)
  • Thunberg: 243 (1823)
  • Volkens: 82 (1892)
  • Baker & Clarke: 87 (1909)
  • Wright: 451 (1912)
  • Brenan: 23 (1954)
  • Aellen: 21 (1961)
  • Aellen: 13 (1967)
  • Botschantsev: 989 (1969)
  • Botschantsev: 140 (1972)
  • Botschantsev: 597 (1974)
  • Wilson: 314 (1984)
  • Brenan: 159 (1988)
  • Kühn: 275 (1993)
  • Freitag & Rilke: 154 (1997)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 150, in Europe, Asia, and Africa, introduced into America and Australia, in arid or semi-arid regions
• Southern Africa : Species 89, conspicuous under karroid conditions, in Namibia, Botswana, North-West, Northern Province, Free State, Northern and Western Cape
  • * Salsola kali L., a native of Asia, is a very widespread weed