Atriplex argentea

Silverscale, Silverscale

Family: Chenopodiaceae · Type: annual · Native

Silverscale is a California native annual found in arid regions of western North America in desert and scrub habitats. Flowering from summer to fall, this plant produces small greenish flowers with distinctive gray-scaly herbage that gives it a silvery appearance. Growing 15 to 80 centimeters tall with stout, angled stems that peel and densely branch, it forms a compact and textured plant structure. Its leaves are elliptic to triangular, 7 to 40 millimeters long, with wavy or entire margins and sometimes a slightly arrow-shaped base. The fruit bracts are 4 to 8 millimeters long, deltate to nearly spherical, with green dentate margins and small tubercles.

California counties: San Diego, Yolo, Merced, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, Riverside, Tulare, San Bernardino, Orange, Ventura, Contra Costa, San Joaquin, Solano, Kings, Kern, Mono, Modoc, Inyo, Fresno, Colusa, Glenn, Lassen, San Luis Obispo

Data from The California Species Project — 14,000+ California species with verified data from CNPS, CDFW, USFWS, Jepson eFlora, Cal-IPC, and more.