Basin wiki · Plants
Fourwing saltbush
Atriplex canescens · hoary saltbush
The gray workhorse of alkaline flats, roadsides, and lots that look too harsh for anything else.
Where you'll see it
Fourwing saltbush is common on valley floors, disturbed roadsides, and alkaline or sandy ground in Landers, Wonder Valley, and the open country north of the highway. It handles soils that creosote shares and some that creosote skips. After road work or a scrape, it is often one of the first native shrubs to reappear, which is why restoration mixes use it.
How to tell it
The shrub is gray-green and densely branched, usually a few feet tall, with small narrow leaves. The giveaway is the fruit: a papery capsule with four wings, stacked along the stems on female plants. Male and female flowers are on separate plants, so a bush with no wings is not automatically a different species. Calflora’s common-name list has lumped “shadscale” onto this page; shadscale is a different Atriplex. Use the wings, not that alias.
Why it matters on a lot
The root system holds soil that would otherwise move in the spring wind. Wildlife browse it, and the canopy is cover on flats where little else is tall. If you are trying to keep a homestead lot from becoming a dust bowl, leaving saltbush and creosote beats imported gravel plus a weekly blow. It will also colonize a septic leach field and a graded shoulder without an invitation.
Water and salt
This is a plant for the water you already have, not a reason to irrigate a meadow. Once established it persists on rainfall. Overwatering pushes rank growth that breaks in wind. It tolerates alkali better than most yard shrubs people bring from the coast, which is the practical reason to learn it before you order a truck of ornamentals that will yellow and quit.