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Suaeda aralocaspica

Suaeda aralocaspica is a small annual halophyte of salty deserts in Central Asia and Mongolia, notable for performing C4 photosynthesis inside single cells. It is a wild species of scientific interest rather than a garden plant.

Family
Amaranthaceae (Amaranth & beet family)
Grows as
Annual
Light
Full sun
Water
Water sparingly; it is adapted to arid, saline ground and tolerates drought.
Soil
Saline or sandy desert soils; a sandy mix with added grit suits cultivation.
Native range
C. Asia to Mongolia
Climate
temperate

About

Suaeda aralocaspica is a species of plant in the family Amaranthaceae that is restricted to the deserts of Central Asia. It is a halophyte and uses C4 carbon fixation but lacks the characteristic leaf anatomy of other C4 plants (known as kranz anatomy). Carrying out complete C4 photosynthesis within individual cells, these plants instead are known as single‐cell C4 system or SCC4 plants. This makes them distinct from typical C4 plants, which require the collaboration of two types of photosynthetic cells. SCC4 plants have features that make them potentially valuable in engineering higher photosynthetic efficiencies in agriculturally important C3 carbon fixation species such as rice. To address this, the 467 Mb genome of S.

Other Suaeda plants

Seablite · Austral Seablite · Pursh seepweed · California seablite · Seablite · Herbaceous seepweed · South-Indian seepweed · Bush Seepweed · Suaeda pulvinata · Suaeda salina · Woolly seablite · Alkali seepweed

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Suaeda aralocaspica 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.

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