Athel Tamarisk

This is our largest and commonest species, often planted as roadside tree. The bark and irregularly rounded galls (Sakun hi Sindhi) are used for tanning.

Trees or large shrubs. Young branches smooth. Leaves sessile, vaginate, ca. 2 mm, base amplexicaul, apex acute. Racemes 3-6 cm × 4-5 mm; when flowering in spring, racemes solitary; flowers blooming more commonly in summer, then racemes on new branches; flowers subsessile; bracts triangular or broadly triangular, exceeding pedicels, base slightly amplexicaul, apex acuminate. Pedicels much shorter than calyx. Calyx 5-fid, ca. 1.5 mm, margin entire, apex obtuse; outer 2 lobes slightly smaller, broadly ovate or broadly elliptic, abaxially slightly carinate; inner 3 larger, broadly elliptic or suborbicular. Petals 5, elliptic, oblong, or ovate-elliptic, 2-2.3 mm, deciduous, sometimes 1 or 2 persistent in fruit. Disk 5-lobed; lobes emarginate at apex or deeply divided into 10 lobules. Stamens 5; filaments inserted between disk lobes. Fl. Sep-Oct and rarely in spring. 2n = 24*.

Trees or tall shrub, up to c. 13 m tall with reddish brown to grey bark, entirely glabrous. Leaves vaginate, abruptly mucronate 1.5-2 (-3) mm long, hoary due to the salt deposition from the impressed punctate glands. Racemes mostly aestival, simple or compound, 2-6 cm long, (2-) 34 (-5) mm broad, spirally curved. Flowers bisexual, subsessile, pinkish white, pedicel less than 1 mm long. Bracts vaginate, ovate, acuminate, 1.25-1.5 mm long, 0.5 mm broad. Sepals 5, free, 1.5 mm long, c. 1 mm broad, almost entire, obtuse, broadly ovate to elliptic, outer 2 somewhat smaller than the inner 3. Petals 5, filaments filiform, 2 mm long, anthers cordate, somewhat apiculate. Disc deeply 5 lobed, filaments inserted in between the lobes of the disc (mesodiscine), insertion peridiscal. Stigmas 3 or 4, discoid, styles half the length of the ovary, ovary conical, 1.75-2 mm long. Capsule pyramidal, rounded at the tip, 2.5-3.5 mm long, c. 1.5 mm broad.

Distribution: Africa (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Senegal, Sudan, Abyssinia, Eriterea, Somaliland, Kenya), Middle East (Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Iraq, Kuwait, Iran) Pakistan, India and Afghanistan.

Fl. Per.: June-October

Cultivated. Taiwan [native to N Africa and SW Asia].

Thuya aphylla Linnaeus, Cent. I Pl. 32. 1755.