东北木蓼 dong bei mu liao

Shrubs ca. 1 m tall. Stem stout, much branched in upper part, with gray-brown bark; epidermis splitting longitudinally; woody branches straight; bark light brown, splitting fibrously; herbaceous branchlets of current year brown, cylindric, glabrous. Leaves very shortly petiolate, green, lanceolate-oblong or linear, 1.4-4 × 0.2-1.5 cm, leathery, glabrous, reticulate veins prominent, base attenuate, margin entire or slightly crenate, apex obtuse, with a short point; ocrea brown at base, cylindric, membranous, pellucid, with 2 slender veins, oblique in upper part and cleft into 2 teeth. Pedicel stout, jointed above middle. Flowers in terminal racemes on branchlets of current year. Tepals 5, pink; outer tepals reflexed in fruit, oblong, longer than above-joint portion of pedicel; inner tepals elliptic, broadly elliptic, or ovate-elliptic, base broadly wedge-form or rounded, apex obtuse. Achenes dark brown, narrowly ovoid, 4-6 mm, trigonous, glabrous, densely granular-raised. Fl. and fr. Jul-Sep.

* Sand dunes, stony slopes, deserts. Hebei, Liaoning, Nei Mongol, Ningxia, Shaanxi.

One of us (Grabovskaya-Borodina) questions whether this is a good species.