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Greasewood
Common
Name(s):
Greasewood
Black Greasewood
Scientific
Name:
Sarcobatus
vermiculatus (Hook.) Torr.
Scientific
Name Synonyms:
None known
Symbol:
SAVE4
Description:
Life Span: Perennial
Origin:
Native
Season: Deciduous
Growth Characteristics:
A
monoecious shrub (male and female plants separate), growing 2 to
8 feet tall, erect or spreading, and much-branched. Flowers June
to August and reproduces from seeds and sprouts.
Flowers/Inflorescence:
Flowers
are unisexual. The numerous male flowers are borne on fleshy, cone-like
terminal spikes, whereas female flowers form singly or in pairs
in the axils of leaf-like bracts, and are wing-like. Flowers are
green, tinged with red.
Fruits/Seeds:
Fruit is a small, coriaceous achene, which is winged at the middle
and green to tan or reddish. Fruit contains small brown seeds.
Leaves: Leaves
of black greasewood are round, linear, and fleshy, with entire margins.
They are bright green in color, and often have a crust of salt that
can be tasted. The leaves are shed in winter.
Stems: Twigs
spreading, much-branched, rigid, white to tan in color, and spiny.
Trunk bark is yellowish-gray to light brown with deep grooves.
Ecological
Adaptations:
Greasewood
grows on dry, sunny, flat valley bottoms, on lowland floodplains,
in ephemeral stream channels, and at playa margins. It is a dominant
plant throughout much of the Great Basin and Mojave Desert. Greasewood
communities generally occur below the moister sagebrush or shadscale
zones. In high saline areas, greasewood often grows in nearly pure
stands, although on less saline sites it commonly grows with a number
of other shrub species and typically has a grass understory.
Greasewood is tolerant of a wide range of climatic conditions but
most commonly grows in areas with hot, dry summers. It commonly
occurs in areas with a seasonally high water table and is often
the only green shrub in pluvial desert sites with available groundwater.
Average annual precipitation ranges from 5 to 10 inches. Elevation
ranges from 4,000 to 7,100 feet.
Greasewood is capable of vegetative regeneration, typically sprouting
after fire, application of herbicides, and other types of disturbance.
Soils: Most
commonly develops on finely textured saline or alkaline soils, it
occasionally grows on coarsely textured non-saline soils.
Associated Species:
Saltgrass,
soapweed, shadscale, alkali
sacaton.
Uses and
Management:
Greasewood
is an important source of food for small mammals and birds. It provides
fair forage for livestock and big game during the winter, being
rich in carotene (vitamin A) and phosphorus. Poisonous oxalates,
found in the leaves, have caused mass mortality in flocks of sheep.
Cattle are rarely poisoned, but spines are reported to puncture
the rumen. The young twigs are especially toxic. Greasewood increases
in toxicity as the growing season advances. Signs of poisoning include
depression, weakness, reluctance to move, rapid and shallow breathing,
drooling, coma, and death.
The wood of greasewood is sometimes used for fuel. American Indians
used the sharpened branches as planting tools.
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