PlantFiles: Four-wing Saltbush, Shadscale, Wing-scale, Salt Sage
Atriplex canescens

Great plant for a xeriscape landscape. I encountered the plant while visiting Albuquerque this year for Balloon Fiesta 2008. Over the course of a week I observed many creatures using this plant for cover and forage.
I for one did not mind shooing the bunnies and quail from under the car at 4am to go chase balloons.
I have done more research into the plants of the southwest and can't wait to try the Salt Bush foliage for a yellow die.

Four-wing Saltbush, Shadscale, Wing-scale, Salt Sage Atriplex canescens is native to Texas and other States.

I love love love it, if you live in a alkaline,clay infested soil, this plant is a jewel. It is so pretty, it`s like a big bushy,multi trunked, dusty miller colored, fast growing,evergreen, ( in my area),... beauty. I can`t find them now where I got them before.

I love this native plant. The seed pods hang on through the autumn and provide gorgeous fall colors!

Evergray shrub, 5ft, gray leaves, native to dry areas of the western U.S. , very drought tolerant after a few good waterings.

The whole plant is edible: seeds can be ground into meal, young shoots used as greens, burned leaf ashes used as baking powder. Useful as gray screen, alkali tolerant, ground cover or specimen, very good bird plant. Cage the plant until the foliage reaches 3-4ft if you have deer or rabbits.

Atriplex is from arid environments and has a C4 photosynthetic pathway which is generally a more efficient way for the plant to conserve water, will defoliate under extreme drought, salts accumulated in leaves allows them to extract water from the soil other plants cannot.They need to be under some form of water stress, either drought, salt, or salt spray. The Atriplex species tolerate and remove the excess salts by bladders in leaves which act as salt sinks and keep the salt from the plant cells. When old leaves are shed or eaten the salt is removed from the plant.