Salicornia

Annual herbs, erect or decumbent, sometimes becoming thinly woody below, glabrous, appearing leafless, built up of many superposed, +/- tubular-segments which are green to reddish and succulent, and ultimately shrivel, each segment at apex forming a little cup, with 2 short teeth, embracing base of next higher segment; branches opposite, articulated. Leaves much reduced, opposite, consisting of small connate scales. Inflorescences short or long, terminal and lateral, fleshy, cylindrical spikes; spike not disarticulating, persistent or breaking up irregularly. Flowers minute, bisexual, or occasionally a few unisexual, usually in clusters of 3, +/- connate, a pair of clusters to each fertile segment, clusters on opposite sides and immersed in hollows at articulations of branches. Perianth angular, minutely 3- or 4-lobed, fleshy, opening in middle of a truncate flattened lateral shield, lobes hard and spongy in fruit, persistent. Stamens 1 or 2 per flower; thecae exserted, nonappendiculate. Ovary ovoid, vertical, narrowed to apex; ovule subsessile; style lacerated at apex. Fruit an utricle, ovoid or oblong in outline, enclosed in spongy perianth; pericarp membranous. Seed erect, small, compressed, +/- oblong; testa thin membranous, minutely hairy; perisperm 0; embryo folded. x= 9 (high polyploidy).