Ephedra alata Decne.
Eng.: Ephedra. Spa.: Efedra alada. Fre.: Alenda, ephèdre ailé. Ara.: Adam, alenda, alda, alde el-gamal, chdida, talaggut, nudadan, zaza. Tam.: Timaïart, arzum, alelga.
Shrub, dioecious, up to 0.5-3 m in height, erect, very branched; in sandy habitats, creeping stolons frequently appear that can reach up to 9 m in length. Branches are born opposite, with greyish bark. Branchlets and leaves opposite, erect, light green to yellowish, widely spaced, giving the shrub the appearance of being sparse. Leaves very small (3-5 mm), concrescent, with the free part ± oval-acute, the upper leaves elongated, more developed, almost acicular. Male cones subsessile, in dense glomerules with 3-7 pairs of flowers each. Anthers (4-8) sessile or pedicellate (important to distinguish the subspecies). Female cones or galbuli generally grouped in 2-5, sometimes solitary, subsessile, subglobose, 8-16 mm in diameter when mature, with 5 pairs of slightly imbricate bracts, that carry two wide lateral membranous wings and ± undulate, white-greenish or pink, brown in the middle.
Flowering:
February to April.
Fruiting:
March to July.
Habitat:
In arid and rocky-sandy soils and in desert dunes. Only on sandy soils for subsp. alenda. From almost sea level up to about 1,200 m.
Distribution:
From the Atlantic Sahara to Iran. In North Africa it is common in the western and northern Sahara, rarer in the central Sahara.
Observations:
Three subspecies of this Ephedra have been described.
E. alata subsp. alata (that also has been cited as subsp decaisnei Stapf) clearly has pedicellate anthers and small galbuli (8-9 mm); it is a small shrub of just 1 m, not common, that grows in rocky-sandy soils of the NE Sahara (eastern Algeria to Egypt).
E. alata subsp. alenda (Stapf) Trab. [E. alenda (Stapf) Andr.] has sessile anthers and larger galbuli (10-16 mm), usually reaches 2-3 m in height and is very frequent in northern Sahara dunes, like in the Grand Erg Occidental, also appearing but less frequently, in western and central (Tassili N’Ajjer) Sahara, from Mauritania to Tunisia.
E. alata subsp. montjeauzeana Dubuis & Faurel also has sessile anthers and large galbuli (10-15 mm), but differs from subsp. alenda in being a shrublet of only 0.5-0.75 m (up to 1 m) and for the characteristic presence of two staminal columns individualised from their insertion, with 4 sessile anthers each, while in subsp. alenda anthers are not individualised. The distribution of this third subspecies, endemic to Algeria, is limited to the S side of the Saharan Atlas, in Mehaiguene River, north of Laghouat.
Conservation status:
In the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species it is listed at a global level as Least Concern (LC) (Bell & Bachman, 2011). In Algeria it is included in the List of protected non cultivated flora (Executive Decree 12-03 on 4-Jan-2012). In Tunisia it is included in its List of native species that are rare and threatened with extinction (Order of the Ministry of Agriculture and Water Resources, 19-July-2006).