Salsola webbii Moq.
Spa.: Salado, barrilla salada. Fre.: Soude.
Evergreen shrub, hermaphrodite, up to 2 m in height, erect, very ramose almost from the base, dense foliage and glabrescent. Trunk and main branches with greyish bark, ± fissured. Branchlets whitish, glaucescent, sinuously striated. Leaves (8-45 × 0.5-12 mm) alternate, sessile, linear, subtrigonous, subacute, mucronate, slightly curved, fleshy, light green and ± glaucous. Fascicles of axillary leaves almost as long as and of the same shape as the leaves. Leaf axil with short hairs. Flowers all hermaphrodite, solitary at the leaf axils. Inflorescence spiciform, with few flowers, arranged in panicles. Perianth with 5 herbaceous parts and 5 stamens. Fruit an achene surrounded by the perianth parts, slightly hardened, with a dorsal wing each. Wing papery, whitish, ± striate.
Flowering:
Spring to summer.
Fruiting:
Autumn to winter.
Habitat:
Semiarid coastal and subcoastal terrains, in semiarid to dry bioclimate, inframediterranean and thermomediterranean floors.
Distribution:
Western Mediterranean (SE Spain and Morocco). In North Africa in the eastern Rif (Cabo Tres Forcas), where it is very rare, and in coastal regions near the High Atlas and the Anti-Atlas, between Safi and Ifni, including the Sus plains.
Conservation status:
It is a rare species but in principle it is not considered threatened. Currently, it has not been assessed at a global level in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. In the Livre Rouge de la flore vasculaire du Maroc (Fennane, 2021) it has been considered as Vulnerable (VU).
