Tamarix aphylla (L.) Karst
Thuja aphylla L., T. orientalis Forssk., T. articulata Vahl, nom. illeg.
Eng.: Athel tamarisk, athel tree. Spa.: Taray áfilo, taraje, atarfe. Fre.: Tamaris aphylle, éthel. Ara.: Athel, atel, athl, ethel, tlaya, laâdab, obadah, firseghé (Hassanía), abl, athl, bigm, fareq, tarfa, ubal (last 6 in Sudan), fersik (Niger). Tam./Tamahaq: Tabarrakat, tabarrakar, tabrakat, tabarekat, takut, tamimmait, taemiyôt, azawa, amaï, ammemaï, afersig, dosso, atila.
Evergreen tree, hermaphrodite, up to 15-20 m in height (or taller in more favourable conditions), irregular in appearance, but with a ± rounded crown and usually a little pendant. Trunk robust, up to 2 m in diameter in old specimens of some oases. Bark greyish, smooth in young branches and deeply fissured longitudinally in the trunk and main branches. Branches extended-erect, sometimes pendulous. Younger branchlets green, very slender. Leaves 2 mm, slightly fleshy, very slender, sessile, glaucous, shaped as a wide, thin, applied ring that embraces the branchlet. Branchlets have the appearance of being articulate and leafless, which makes this species easy to identify within the high variability of this complex genus. Flowers very small, arranged in slender and long racemes (30-60 × 4-5 mm), which grow directly on young branchlets. Flowers subsessile, pentamerous, with 5 petals elliptic-oblong or ovate-elliptic, white and 5 stamens. Staminal disk hololophic, although sometimes the disk lobes are not well noticeable. Fruit a capsule, relatively small, ovoid (2.5-3.5 mm), which contains minute, numerous seeds, with a tuft of unicellular whitish hairs.
Flowering:
June to December.
Fruiting:
July to January.
Habitat:
Desert terrain with some edaphic humidity, basically along river beds and banks, but also fairly stable dunes, which these same trees fixate.
Distribution:
Saharan-Arabian region and drier areas of the Mediterranean region, reaching towards the E up to Pakistan. In North Africa it has a wide distribution, including almost all the Sahara desert, reaching towards the N to the Mediterranean in some parts of eastern Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.
Observations:
An extraordinary tree for its ability to fix dunes, and it has been used for this purpose across the Sahara (Morocco, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea). Also due to its large size it has been planted as an ornamental in parks and main streets of Saharan villages.This tree does not grow well on saline soils, and therefore it is unsuitable for protecting margins of sabkhas and other salt marshes. However, it is well suited to endure prolonged period of drought, therefore growing vigorously on small dunes where its value for fixating sand is essential. In these dunes there is a well established dune-tree balance, in which if one of them is missing the other one would disappear. The balance is simple but delicate: the sand covers the parched soil of the desert; after rain water quickly filters to the soil, where it remains for quite some time due to the insulating properties provided by the layer of sand covering it. This moisture, that lasts longer beneath the dunes than outside of them, is used by trees to survive; their roots travel across the sand in all directions until they are widely distributed across the moist soil. These roots in turn help fix the sand, and the aerial part of the tree stops the sand particles carried by the wind, causing them to build up at its base. Thus, in perfect harmony, the tree grows as the dune develops. If the tree is felled, the dune which had been fixed in one place for years and even centuries, starts shifting, burying along fields, crops and roads. Therefore, protection and massive reforestation of dune systems or margins of dunes using these trees should be a priority in many Saharan regions, provided it does not affect other species of such valuable ecosystems, like forests of Calligonum calvescnes in the Grand Erg Oriental.
Conservation status:
A common and widespread species. In the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species it is listed as Least Concern (LC) at global level (Harvey-Brown, 2022).