This plant is locally called greasewood, but as this name is much more commonly used for Sarcobatus vermiculatus, it seems best to call Allenrolfea “bushy samphire,” as it closely resembles the true samphire (Salicornia).
Bushy Samphire usually grows in low sinks, in clay soil which in winter is excessively wet, and in summer becomes a “dry bog.” Wherever the plant grows luxuriantly the salt content is invariably high, the total salts varying from 327,000 pounds per acre, to a depth of three feet, to 494,520 pounds in four feet. The salts consist mainly of Glauber’s and common salts (a maximum of about 275,000 pounds each); salsoda varies from 2,360 to 4,800 pounds per acre. The percentage of common salt and total salts is higher than for any other plant investigated, and the content of Glauber’s salt is also excessive. The areas over which this plant grows must therefore be considered among the most hopeless of alkali lands, for although its salts are “white,” submergence during winter precludes the growth of Australian saltbushes. Full underdrainage alone could reclaim the soil-areas it occupies. Bushy Samphire is common on low-lying alkali lands in the upper San Joaquin Valley, California, and extends northward along the eastern slopes of the Coast Range to Suisun Bay. It is also abundant in the Death Valley region, apparently overlapping the southward range of the Sarcobatus, the greasewood properly so-called.
Dwarf samphire
(Salicornia subterminalis,
Parish, and other species of the interior); Fig. 84.
Fig. 83.—Bushy Samphire—Allenrolfea occidentalis
(S. Wats.) G. Ktze.
Fig. 84.—Salicornia subterminalis.
Alkali samphire.
A. Much-branched form.
B. Slender form.
C. Flower with the perianth removed showing the simple pistil and the two stamens.