2269.000 Salsola L. - Saltworts

Annual or more often perennial herbs or shrubs, usually pubescent. Leaves usually more or less fleshy, entire, alternate or sometimes opposite, sessile, narrow, often scale-like, sometimes linear-subulate. Flowers axillary, solitary or fascicled, sometimes aggregated in a spiciform way towards ends of branchlets, subtended by two relatively large bracteoles. Perianth (4) 5-partite, the lobes nearly always each developing in fruit above the middle a scarious horizontally spreading wing. Fruit with membranous or somewhat fleshy pericarp. Seeds normally vertically compressed; testa membranous, embryo spiral.

Worldwide: Species c 150, cosmopolitan.

Botswana: 8 taxa.