The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Atriplex hymenelytra
Also called Desert Holly
Desert holly is a silvery-gray desert shrub from the southwestern US and northwestern Mexico, known as the most drought-tolerant saltbush in North America. It is grown outdoors in dry, alkaline, well-drained soils where it can be kept almost entirely dry.
Atriplex hymenelytra, the desert holly, is silvery-whitish-gray shrub in the family Amaranthaceae, native to deserts of the southwestern United States. It is the most drought tolerant saltbush in North America. It can tolerate the hottest and driest sites in Death Valley, and remains active most of the year.
The common name refers to the leaves that are shaped similar to holly, but the plants are not related. The toothed leaves and the small reddish fruits borne on the plant give it a passing resemblance to the unrelated European holly.
Desert holly grows in alkaline locations such as desert dry wash and creosote bush scrub in the Mojave Desert and Sonoran Desert down to Baja California. In the Sonoran Desert it grows in northwestern Mexico, western Arizona, and southeastern California to southwestern Utah, and can be found at elevations ranging from 250 to 3,900 feet (76 to 1,189 m).
Tubercled saltbush · Swamp Saltbush · Fan Saltbush · Silverscale saltbush · Native Orache · Atriplex billardierei · Silver saltbush · Fourwing saltbush · Gray saltbush · Flat-topped saltbush · Shadscale saltbush · Heartscale
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Atriplex hymenelytra by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
