柴达木沙拐枣 chai da mu sha guai zao

Shrubs 0.6-2 m tall. Old branches light gray or yellow-gray; herbaceous branchlets of current year gray-green; joints 2-3 cm; branches upward spreading. Flowers dense, 2 or 3 at leaf axil. Fruit broadly ellipsoid, 1-1.7 × 0.8-1.5 cm. Achenes ovoid, coiled or not; ribs obtuse; bristles in 2 rows at center of ribs, breakable, sparse or dense, flat at base, slightly enlarged, somewhat united or not, 2-forked from middle. Fr. Jul.

* Mobile sand dunes; 1500-2700 m. Qinghai, Xinjiang.

One of us (Grabovskaya-Borodina) regards this as a synonym of Calligonum litvinovii Drobow (see Borodina, Rast. Tsentral. Azii 9: 122–130. 1989).