Salsola melitensis
species of plant
Salsola melitensis, commonly known as Maltese salt tree, is a species of vascular plant that is endemic to the Maltese archipelago. Its generic name is derived from the Latin word “salsus” which means salty, attributing to the salt tolerant nature of the species within this genus.
Classification
Work towards the identification and classification of Salsola melitensis began in around 1970 when Lanfranco and Brullo confirmed that Salsola vermiculata (now Caroxylon vermiculatum) did not occur in Malta, contrary to what was so far reported, since Maltese specimens of purported S. vermiculata did not correspond to any existing taxonomic description at the time. S. melitensis was eventually classified by Botschantzev in 1976 from a herbarium specimen in Leningrad, establishing it as distinct from Salsola vermiculata with which it was confused for many years since 1915 after Sommier and Caruana Gatto's description.
Its generic name is derived from the Latin word “salsus” which means salty, attributing to the salt tolerant nature of the species within this genus. In 1984, some shrubby species in the genus Salsola were reorganised by Brullo under the genus Darniella. Salsola melitensis was then known as Darniella meliltensis until 2000, when the classification of the 12 species of the genus Darniella proposed by Brullo was rejected by Govaerts, and its species were transferred back to the genus Salsola.
Description
Salsola melitensis is a perennial woody shrub with thin succulent leaves. Its stem trails on the ground or sometimes with the extremity tending to ascend. The trunk elevates the canopy to a height of up to 2.5 m.
The public source identifies “Salsola melitensis” as species of plant. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Salsola, melitensis and species.
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This entry incorporates text from “Salsola melitensis” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.