''Allenrolfea occidentalis'', the iodine bush, is a low-lying

shrub A shrub (often also called a bush) is a small-to-medium-sized perennial woody plant. Unlike herbaceous plants, shrubs have persistent woody stems above the ground. Shrubs can be either deciduous or evergreen. They are distinguished from trees ...

of the

Southwestern United States The Southwestern United States, also known as the American Southwest or simply the Southwest, is a geographic and cultural region of the United States that generally includes Arizona, New Mexico, and adjacent portions of California, Colorado, Ne ...

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

Idaho Idaho ( ) is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. To the north, it shares a small portion of the Canada–United States border with the province of British Columbia. It borders the states of Montana and Wyom ...

, and northern

Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...

.Shultz, L.M.: 'eFloras 2008
''Allenrolfea occidentalis'' in Flora of North America
Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, MO & Harvard University Herbaria, Cambridge, MA. It grows in sandy, often salty, distinctly alkaline soils, such as desert washes and saline dry lakebeds. It is a common

halophyte A halophyte is a salt-tolerant plant that grows in soil or waters of high salinity, coming into contact with saline water through its roots or by salt spray, such as in saline semi-deserts, mangrove swamps, marshes and sloughs and seashores. T ...

member of the alkali flat ecosystem.

Description

The knobby green stems are fleshy and appear jointed at the

internodes A stem is one of two main structural axes of a vascular plant, the other being the root. It supports leaves, flowers and fruits, transports water and dissolved substances between the roots and the shoots in the xylem and phloem, stores nutrien ...

between segments. Often the segments are so short they are nearly round. The leaves appear as flaky scales scattered across the surface of the stems. The genus was named for the English botanist

Robert Allen Rolfe Robert Allen Rolfe (1855, Wilford, Nottinghamshire – 1921, Richmond, Surrey) was an English botanist specialising in the study of orchids. For a time he worked in the gardens at Welbeck Abbey. He entered Kew in 1879 and became second assistant. ...

.Shultz, L.M.: 'eFloras 2008
''Allenrolfea'' in Flora of North America
Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, MO & Harvard University Herbaria, Cambridge, MA. The seeds of iodinebush have been used as food in

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...

prehistory Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of ...

.Rhode, David; Madsen, David B.; Jones, Kevin T. (2006
Antiquity of early Holocene small-seed consumption and processing at Danger Cave
''Antiquity'' 80(308):328-339

References

External links

Jepson Manual TreatmentUSDA Plants ProfilePhoto gallery
Amaranthaceae Halophytes Flora of the Southwestern United States Flora of Northwestern Mexico Flora of Idaho Flora of the Northwestern United States Flora of California Flora of the California desert regions Flora of the Sonoran Deserts Flora of the Great Basin Plants described in 1871 Taxa named by Sereno Watson Flora without expected TNC conservation status {{Amaranthaceae-stub

Description

References

Further reading

External links