''Halophytum ameghinoi'' is a species of herbaceous plant endemic to Patagonia. It is the only species in the genus ''Halophytum''. It is a

succulent In botany, succulent plants, also known as succulents, are plants with parts that are thickened, fleshy, and engorged, usually to retain water in arid climates or soil conditions. The word ''succulent'' comes from the Latin word ''sucus'', meani ...

annual plant An annual plant is a plant that completes its life cycle, from germination to the production of seeds, within one growing season, and then dies. The length of growing seasons and period in which they take place vary according to geographical ...

, with simple, fleshy, alternate leaves. The plants are

monoecious Monoecy (; adj. monoecious ) is a sexual system in seed plants where separate male and female cones or flowers are present on the same plant. It is a monomorphic sexual system alongside gynomonoecy, andromonoecy and trimonoecy. Monoecy is conne ...

, with solitary female flowers and inflorescences of male flowers on the same plant . ''Halophytum'' has sometimes been placed in its own family, Halophytaceae. For instance, the 2009

APG III system The APG III system of flowering plant classification is the third version of a modern, mostly molecular-based, system of plant taxonomy being developed by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APG). Published in 2009, it was superseded in 2016 by a fur ...

and the 2003 APG II system recognise the family and assign it to the order Caryophyllales in the clade core eudicots, although the 1998 APG system did not recognise such a family, placing its members in the family Chenopodiaceae instead.

References

Caryophyllales Monotypic Caryophyllales genera Flora of Argentina Flora of South America Patagonia Taxa named by Carlo Luigi Spegazzini {{Caryophyllales-stub