''Prosopis strombulifera'' is a species of
mesquite
Mesquite is a common name for several plants in the genus '' Prosopis'', which contains over 40 species of small leguminous trees. They are native to dry areas in the Americas.
They have extremely long roots to seek water from very far under gr ...
or ''
algarrobo'', a
shrub in the
legume family. It is known by the
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
common names Argentine screwbean and creeping screwbean and the
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
common name ''retortuño''.
[CDFA EncycloWeedia]
California Department of Food and Agriculture
The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) is a cabinet-level agency in the government of California. Established in 1919 by the California State Legislature and signed into law by Governor William Stephens, the Department of Food ...
This shrub is native to
Argentina
Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...
, where it grows in arid and
saline soils. It became well known in
California
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...
after it was
introduced to
Imperial County
Imperial Count (german: Reichsgraf) was a title in the Holy Roman Empire. In the medieval era, it was used exclusively to designate the holder of an imperial county, that is, a fief held directly ( immediately) from the emperor, rather than from ...
and took hold in the wild, growing as an
invasive noxious weed.
[ The plant grows from a network of long, spreading roots and may grow to three meters in height. Many plants may grow together in an area, forming a monotypic stand. The shrub has waxy-textured leaves made up of a pair of leaflets which are each divided into several pairs of secondary leaflets each up to a centimeter long. Whitish spines up to 2 cm long appear near the leaf bases. The ]inflorescence
An inflorescence is a group or cluster of flowers arranged on a Plant stem, stem that is composed of a main branch or a complicated arrangement of branches. Morphology (biology), Morphologically, it is the modified part of the shoot of sperma ...
is a spherical head of many very narrow tubelike yellow flowers, the head measuring about 1.5 cm wide. The fruit is a bright yellow seed pod coiled tightly into a cylindrical stick up to 5 cm long. It contains several greenish seeds, each about 0.5 cm long.
References
External links
Jepson Manual Treatment
USDA Plants Profile
Photo gallery
strombulifera
Flora of Argentina
{{Mimosoideae-stub