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Tecticornia lylei
Tecticornia lylei, known as wiry glasswort, is a small erect shrub of Australian salt lakes and saline clay flats, growing up to about 1 m tall. It needs saline, seasonally waterlogged soil to thrive, so it is rarely grown outside its natural habitat.
Tecticornia lylei, commonly known as wiry glasswort, is a small shrub with in the family Chenopodiaceae. It occurs in saline clay soils on the beds of and around the perimeter of salt lakes. The erect shrub can grow up to 1 m in height and 1.5 m wide, and has slender branches with very slender branchlets, its articles cylindrical, dull mid-green and about 3 mm long and 2 mm wide. The wiry glasswort flowers between November and June, with tiny flowers less than 3 mm across which fruit when pollinated. Listed as endangered in New South Wales and rare in Victoria and South Australia, T. lylei is threatened by trampling and overgrazing, vegetation clearing and stochastic events.
Tecticornia lylei can be grown from tube stock, by cutting, or by direct seeding. Fruiting segments should be collected from the middle of January to late February. Shoots or whole plants should be harvested by hand or with a forage harvester and spread on the new site. This process is most effective when the new site is in lightly cultivated, salt-affected areas to enable plants to germinate and spread naturally.
Tecticornia lylei is an endangered species in NSW and rare in Victoria, with the numbers especially low in the once plentiful low open-shrubland in the Murray Darling Depression Bioregion. Requiring particularly saline soils to survive, it occurs on saline clay soils on the beds of small salt lakes and around the perimeter of larger salt lakes. T. lylei may also be found in somewhat saline and seasonally waterlogged localities.
Tecticornia arborea · Shrubby Glasswort · Tecticornia australasica · Tecticornia bibenda · Grey Samphire · Mungily · Blackseed Glasswort · Tecticornia verrucosa · Tecticornia
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Tecticornia lylei 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.
