Zygophyllum aegyptium Hosny
Tetraena aegyptia (Hosny) Beier & Thulin
Spa.: Morsana egipcia. Ara.: Bu griba, tartir, haaka, khoressa, ensal, qillam, r’ardem. Tam.: Haggaïa, tirta, moïlhe.
Evergreen shrub, hermaphrodite, glabrous or slightly hairy, up to 80 cm, with erect and branched stems. Mature stems woody, whitish, glabrous, cylindrical, with dark striations; young branchlets green, slightly hairy, angular and striated. Leaves bifoliolate, greenish, glabrous, with stipules (1 mm, broadly triangular), petioles 0.6-1.2(1.4) cm and leaflets oblanceolate, 0.5-1 cm. Flowers arranged in groups of 2-3(4) at the nodes, with pedicels 1-2.5 mm, elongated at Fruiting. Sepals ovate (3.4 × 2 mm) and petals (4-5 mm) white and longly unguiculate. Scales of staminal filaments 2 mm. Fruit a 5-lobed schizocarp (5-9 × 5-8 mm), short peduncle (4-5 mm) obconic and style 1.5 mm. Seeds 1.5 × 1 mm, ovoid.
Flowering:
No data for this region
Fruiting:
No data for this region
Habitat:
Coastal dunes and in highly saline environments along the coast and, more rarely, inland.
Distribution:
Endemic to coasts of NE Africa (Libya and Egypt), reaching the Sinai Peninsula.
Observations:
It has been cited in Tunisia but not considered in this country by Dobignard & Chatelain (2013) and the African Plant Database. It has also been cited in Cyprus, but the authors of this work (see www.flora-of-cyprus.eu) reject the characters used by Hosny (1977) to separate Z. album and claim that these characters “are not valid in the Cypriot material”, which would seem to suggest that Z. aegyptium falls within the variability of Z. album. Pending future studies to resolve this debate, this species is treated as a separate taxon following Hosny, separated by the characters that the author mentions. In addition, there is very little information about its presence and extent in Libya.
Conservation status:
A relatively unknown species but in principle it is not considered threatened. Currently, it has not been assessed at a global level in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. In the updated red list of Egypt (Shaltout & Bedair, 2023) it has been considered as Least Concern (LC).