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.
Soda rosmarinus is a perennial, fleshy-leaved saltwort (subshrub) of salt flats and alkaline wadis in the Middle East. It is a drought-tolerant xerophyte whose key to growing it is providing full sun, very well-drained saline soil and minimal water.
Soda rosmarinus is a perennial-green desert species of saltwort in the Amaranthaceae family. It is endemic to the lower Jordan Valley along the Dead Sea, in Israel and Jordan, and in the Syrian desert, Central Iraq (near Najaf) and in the coastal regions of Saudi Arabia, the islands of Bahrain, Qatar, and Iran, commonly known in Arabic by the names ʾušnān (Arabic: أشنان) and šenān and in the Neo-Aramaic languages by reflexes of ʾuḥlā. It is often used by Bedouins for cleaning as a soap substitute. In medieval Arabic literature, it is also known by the names of "green ushnan" and "launderers' potash", having been used since time immemorial to produce nabulsi soap and as an electuary in compounding theriac for use in treating scorpion stings, as well as for extracting potassium for other medicinal uses.
The plant grows mainly in salt flats (Arabic: sabkha) in hard soil surfaces, and can also be found growing along riverine gulches (Arabic: wadi) and in drainage runnels that have alkaline and saline soils, subsequently accumulating in its leaves a high quantity of sodium and chloride (chlorine ions). It thrives in silty soil which is very slippery and muddy when wet, but becomes baked hard with a flaking surface which breaks up into a fine dust when dry, and can especially be seen growing on hummocks in such terrain.
The species has been used in antiquity for the production of potash, hence its Arabic name, ušnān. The 10th-century Arab physician, al-Tamimi, described the plant in his day as being imported into Palestine, Egypt, and other regions from the riverine gulches around the vicinity of Amman, in Transjordan, and used in the production of an alkali soap (Arabic: غاسول = ġāsūl) and of cleaning agents. According to al-Tamimi, the plants were gathered in their fresh, green state in large bundles, transferred to furnaces made with plastered floors and stone spouts, where they were cast inside, beneath which were laid large timbers that were set aflame, causing the melting alkali substance to drip down by the spouts into a threshing floor directly below. The liquid would be collected and eventually become hardened when it cooled, the finished product resembling a hard, black-colored stone. The stone-like mineral could be broken up into smaller fragments and used as a laundry detergent.
Oppositeleaf Russian Thistle · Soda oppositifolia · Soda stocksii · Soda
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Soda rosmarinus 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.
