Common Name: GOOSEFOOT FAMILY Habit: Annual to shrub; hairs simple, stellate, or glandular; plants in several genera scaly, mealy, or powdery from collapsed glands; monoecious, dioecious, with bisexual flowers, or with both bisexual and unisexual flowers. Stem: occasionally fleshy. Leaf: blade simple, generally alternate, occasionally fleshy or reduced to scales, veins pinnate; stipules 0. Inflorescence: raceme, spike, catkin-like, spheric head, axillary clusters of flowers, or flowers 1; bracts 0--5, herbaceous, generally persistent or strongly modified in fruit, wings, tubercles or spines present or 0. Flower: bisexual or unisexual, small, generally green; calyx parts (1)3--5, or 0 in pistillate flowers, free or fused basally (or +- throughout), leaf-like in texture, membranous, or fleshy, deciduous or not, often strongly modified in fruit; corolla 0; stamens 1--5, opposite sepals, filaments free, equal; anthers 4-chambered; ovary superior (1/2-inferior), chamber 1; ovule 1; styles, stigmas 1--4 (or stigmas sessile). Fruit: achene or utricle, generally falling with persistent calyx or bracts. Seed: 1, small, lenticular to spheric; seed coat smooth to finely dotted, warty, net-like, or prickly, margin occasionally winged. Genera In Family: 100 genera, 1500 species: worldwide, especially deserts, saline or alkaline soils; some cultivated for food (Beta vulgaris subsp. vulgaris, beet, Swiss chard; Spinacia oleracea L., spinach; Chenopodium quinoa Willd., quinoa); and some worldwide, naturalized ruderal or noxious agricultural weeds. Note:Nitrophila treated in Amaranthaceae, Sarcobatus treated in Sarcobataceae. Key to genera revised by Elizabeth H. Zacharias to incorporate Extriplex and Stutzia, 2 genera segregated from Atriplex. Native spp. of Kochia now treated in Neokochia. Chenopodiaceae often treated now within a more broadly circumscribed Amaranthaceae (Morales-Briones et al. 2021). eFlora Treatment Author: Mihai Costea, family description, key to genera, revised by Thomas J. Rosatti & Elizabeth H. Zacharias, except as noted Scientific Editor: Bruce G. Baldwin, David J. Keil, Thomas J. Rosatti, Margriet Wetherwax.
NATIVE Habit: Shrub rounded; scaly-puberulent, hairs branched, glabrous in age; generally dioecious. Stem: generally 3--10(15) dm, branches many, stiff; bark red-brown, +- white-ribbed, peeling in strips, older bark gray; twigs spine-like in age. Leaf: alternate, 5--25(40) mm, generally spoon-shaped to oblanceolate, flat, entire, tapered to short-petioled, blade green, tip generally +- white. Staminate Inflorescence: spike-like, terminal, 7--18 mm; bract +- leaf-like; flowers 2--5 per cluster. Pistillate Inflorescence: +- spike-like, axillary or terminal, 6--18 cm in fruit; flowers 1--few per cluster; bracts 3--10 mm, +- leaf-like; fruit bracts 2, 7--15 mm, fused, together sac-like, +- round, flat, winged, white to red-tinged, margins entire. Staminate Flower: calyx lobes 4, 1.5--2 mm, enclosing stamens; stamens 4--5. Pistillate Flower: stigmas 2, exserted. Fruit: generally 1.5--2 mm, brown. Chromosomes: 2n=36. Ecology: Sandy to gravelly soils in scrub, pinyon/juniper woodland; Elevation: 300--2900 m. Bioregional Distribution: SNH (e slope), Teh, se SnJV, WTR (n slope), GB, DMoj, nw DSon; Distribution Outside California: to Washington, Montana, New Mexico. Flowering Time: Mar--Jun Unabridged Synonyms: Chenopodium spinosum Hook. Jepson eFlora Author: Margriet Wetherwax & Dieter H. Wilken Reference: Holmgren 2003 FNANM 4:306--307 Index of California Plant Names (ICPN; linked via the Jepson Online Interchange) Previous taxon: Grayia Next taxon: Halogeton
Citation for this treatment: Margriet Wetherwax & Dieter H. Wilken 2012, Grayia spinosa, in Jepson Flora Project (eds.) Jepson eFlora, https://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/eflora/eflora_display.php?tid=27306, accessed on April 24, 2024.
Citation for the whole project: Jepson Flora Project (eds.) 2024, Jepson eFlora, https://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/eflora/, accessed on April 24, 2024.
Geographic subdivisions for Grayia spinosa:
SNH (e slope), Teh, se SnJV, WTR (n slope), GB, DMoj, nw DSon
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(Note: any qualifiers in the taxon distribution description, such as 'northern', 'southern', 'adjacent' etc., are not reflected in the map above, and in some cases indication of a taxon in a subdivision is based on a single collection or author-verified occurence).
Data provided by the participants of the
Consortium of California Herbaria.
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Blue markers indicate specimens that map to one of the expected Jepson geographic subdivisions (see left map). Purple markers indicate specimens collected from a garden, greenhouse, or other non-wild location.
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CCH collections by month
Duplicates counted once; synonyms included.
Species do not include records of infraspecific taxa, if there are more than 1 infraspecific taxon in CA.
Blue line denotes eFlora flowering time (fruiting time in some monocot genera).
