Anabasis aphylla L.

This species is used medicinally and for stabilizing dunes. The annual branches contain the alkaloid anabasine (C10H14N2), a botanical insecticide.

Subshrubs 20-50 cm tall. Woody stem much branched; branchlets gray-white, usually fissured annular; annual branches erect or obliquely spreading, simple or branched, fresh green; internodes numerous, terete, 0.5-1.5 cm. Leaves obscure or slightly scale-like, broadly triangular, apex obtuse or acute. Flowers 1-3 in leaf axils, forming spikes on upper part of branches; bractlets shorter than perianth, margin membranous. Outer 3 perianth segments suborbicular, proximally with a transverse wing abaxially; wing erect, light yellow or pink, flabellate, orbicular, or reniform, membranous; inner 2 perianth segments elliptic, wingless or small winged. Disk lobes linear, apex pectinate. Utricle vertical, subglobose, 1.5-2 mm in diam.; pericarp dark red, fleshy, smooth. Fl. Aug-Sep, fr. Oct.

Gobi desert, inter-dunes, gravelly alluvial fans, sometimes on arid slopes. W Gansu, Xinjiang [Russia (SW Siberia); C Asia, Europe].

Anabasis tatarica Pallas.

Anabasis aphylla is a species of flowering plant in the family Amaranthaceae, native to the region surrounding the Caspian Sea, Central Asia, and Xinjiang and western Gansu provinces of China. A many-branched shrub usually found growing in alluvial fans and dune swales, it is sometimes planted to catch blowing soil and stabilize sand dunes. The alkaloid anabasine was named for this toxic species, from which it was first isolated by Orechoff and Menschikoff in the year 1931. Anabasine was widely used as an insecticide in the former Soviet Union until 1970.