Atriplex bunburyana

Atriplex bunburyana, commonly known as Silver Saltbush, is a species of saltbush endemic to Western Australia

Western Australia

Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...

.

Description

It grows as an erect shrub up to a metre high, with slender branches that are often straight and rigid. Leaves are oval in shape, five to 20 millimetres long, with a linear margin and a blueish colour caused by a thin scaly coating.

Taxonomy

It was first published by Ferdinand von Mueller

Ferdinand von Mueller

Baron Sir Ferdinand Jacob Heinrich von Mueller, KCMG was a German-Australian physician, geographer, and most notably, a botanist.-Early life:...

 in 1882 under the name Atriplex bunburyanum, but this name was orthographically

Orthography

The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...

 invalid and has been corrected to Atriplex bunburyana. The name refers to the collector of the type specimen, a Miss Bunbury, who collected specimens of this species from the Gascoyne River

Gascoyne River

At 760 km, the Gascoyne River is the longest river in Western Australia.The river rises below Wilgoona Hill in the Robinson Ranges west of the Gibson Desert and it flows into Shark Bay and the Indian Ocean at Carnarvon....

 in 1882.

The species' only synonym is A. paludosa subsp. graciliflora, published by Paul Aellen in 1938.

Distribution and habitat

Endemic to Western Australia

Western Australia

Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...

, it occurs through most of the western half of the state, both near the coast and inland.