柽柳 cheng liu

Tamarix juniperina Bunge.

Trees or shrubs, 3-6(-8) m tall. Branchlets dense, often pendulous, red-purple, slender. Leaves green, those of vegetative branches slightly spreading, oblong-lanceolate or narrowly ovate, 1.5-1.8 mm, abaxially carinate at base, often thinly membranous, apex acute; those of vegetative branches in upper part subulate or ovate-lanceolate, 1-3 mm, abaxially carinate, base attenuate, apex acuminate, incurved. Flowers blooming 2 or 3 times each year. When blooming in spring, racemes lateral in pendulous, ligneous, growing branchlets of previous year, 3-6 cm × 5-7 mm, few flowered, lax, and pendulous; peduncles short or nearly absent, with or without bracts; bracts linear-oblong or oblong, equaling or slightly exceeding pedicels, apex acuminate; pedicels shorter than calyx, slender; flowers 5-merous; sepals 5, narrowly ovate, 0.8-1.3 mm, slightly shorter than petals, outer 2 carinate abaxially, margin slightly entire, apex mucronate; petals 5, pink, usually ovate-elliptic or elliptic-obovate, rarely obovate, ca. 2 mm, slightly exceeding calyx, persistent in fruit; disk purple-red, fleshy, 5-fid; lobes obtuse or retuse at apex; stamens 5, exceeding petals; filaments inserted between disk lobes; ovary conic; styles 3, clavate, ca. 1/2 as long as ovary. Capsule conic. When blooming in summer and autumn, racemes 3-5 cm, smaller than those in spring, forming terminal large panicles on branches of current year; flowers 5-merous, slightly smaller than those in spring, dense; bracts green, linear to linear-conic or narrowly triangular, smaller and narrower than those of spring flowers, longer than pedicels, abaxially raised at base, base attenuate, margin entire, apex acuminate; calyx triangular-ovate; petals pink, straight or slightly oblique outward, much exceeding calyx; disk 5-lobed, or subdivided into 10 lobules; stamens 5, equaling or ca. 2 × as long as petals; anthers obtuse; filaments inserted between disk lobes; styles clavate, 2/5-3/4 as long as ovary. Fl. Apr-Sep. 2n = 24*.

● Plains along rivers, seashores, moist salty places, sandy places. Anhui, Hebei, Henan, Jiangsu, Liaoning, Shandong; also widely cultivated in S and SW provinces.