Salicornia L.

• Authority

  Britton, Nathaniel L. & Millspaugh, Charles F. 1920. The Bahama Flora.

• Family

  Amaranthaceae

• Scientific Name

  Salicornia L.

• Description

  Description - Fleshy glabrous herbs with opposite terete branches, the leaves reduced to mere opposite scales, the flowers sunken 3-7 together in the axils of the upper ones forming narrow terminal spikes, perfect or the lateral ones staminate. Calyx obpyramidal or rhomboid, fleshy, 3-4-toothed or truncate, becoming spongy in fruit, deciduous. Stamens 2, or sometimes solitary, exserted; filaments cylindrie, short; anthers oblong, large. Ovary ovoid; styles or stigmas 2. Utricles enclosed by the spongy fruiting calyx, the pericarp membranous. Seed erect, compressed; embryo conduplicate; endosperm none. [Name Greek, salt-horn; from the saline habitat, and horn-like branches.] About 10 species, natives of saline soil, widely distributed in both the Old World and the New. Type species: Salicornia europaea L.