Chenopodium nitrariacea, F. Muell

George Bentham & Ferdinand Mueller, 1870, Chenopodium & Dysphania, Flora Australiensis, London: L. Reeve & Co., pp. 157-165 : -1

1. C. nitrariacea, F. Muell .

A rigid divaricately branched or prostrate shrub or undershrub, hoary or mealy-white all over with a minute tomentum, the smaller branchlets often spinescent but not nearly so slender as in Rhagodia spinescens. Leaves alternate, sometimes clustered at the base of the flowering branchlets, linear oblong or linear-spathulate, very obtuse, entire, contracted into a short petiole, from under ½ in. to nearly 1 in. long. Flowers sessile, usually clustered in interrupted or dense spikes, either simple and terminal or forming short divaricate branches to a terminal panicle, mostly hermaphrodite with a few males intermixed. Perianth-segments broad, thick, concave, slightly imbricate in the bud. Stamens 5, shortly exserted, the filaments flat and glabrous. Ovary ovoid, erect, the styles short, rather thick, united at the base. Fruit enclosed in the unaltered perianth. Pericarp membranous. Seed erect, flat; embryo circinate, the radicle usually inferior. - Rhagodia nitrariacca, F. Muell.in Trans. Phil. Inst. Vict. ii. 73.

N. Australia. N.W. coast, Bynoe , the specimens in bud and in some measure doubtful. N. S. Wales. Darling river , Victorian Expedition, Mrs. Ford. Victoria. Murray and Avoca rivers , F. Mueller.

W. Australia. Swan river , Drummond .

some other specimens referred to this species by F. Mueller appear to me to belong to Rhagodia spinescens, but are too young to determine. In all those which I have quoted as typical, I have uniformly found the seed, either already enlarged after flowering or quite ripe, erect and enclosed in a thin dry pericarp.