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.

Habit: Annual to shrub. Stem: simple to many-branched. Leaf: generally reduced distally along stem, thread-like to +- cylindric, spine-tipped, in age generally thick, rigid. Inflorescence: axillary; bracts 1--2; flowers generally 1 per axil. Flower: bisexual; sepals 4--5, thickened in fruit, persistent, generally tubercled to winged; stamens generally 5, exserted, style branches generally 2, exserted. Fruit: spheric to obovoid; tip +- depressed. Seed: horizontal.
Etymology: (Latin: salty, from habitats) Note: An alternative treatment as separate genera Kali (Salsola australis, Salsola gobicola, Salsola paulsenii, Salsola ryanii, Salsola tragus), Caroxylon (Salsola damascena), and Salsola (Salsola soda) has been proposed (Akhani et al. 2007 Int J Plant Sci 168:931--956).
eFlora Treatment Author: G. Frederic Hrusa
Reference: Mosyakin 2003 FNANM 4:398--403; Hrusa & Gaskin 2008 Madroño 55:113--131