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Quailbush

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• September 19, 2025
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I love tough plants. A tough, beautiful, useful plant is a superstar. Big saltbush – also called quailbush in the desert Southwest – is just such a wonderment. There are many other species of Atriplex – also often called saltbush (we’ll come to that) – but here I want to celebrate Atriplex lentiformis, native to the Sonoran Desert and to many other regions in the American southwest. In Tucson it is often referred to as quailbush to distinguish it form Atiplex canescens – fourwing saltbush – both found in nurseries. [1]

Quailbush grows pretty fast – moderate in the wild, it is fast when irrigated even minimally. The foliage is dense and pale silvery green. It’s called quailbush because Gambel’s quail love it as habitat – and they aren’t alone. In my own garden it is a favorite hideout for lizards, sparrows, finches, and doves. Sometimes the whole bush just shakes with birds.

That big, gray-green shrub on the right is a quailbush. Three years ago it was one 6-inch stalk in a gallon pot. It receives ten minutes’ irrigation per week, it’s had two terrible rain years in a row, and now measures about 6 x 8 feet.

The natural habitats of quailbush include valleys, small seasonal waterways, bajadas, floodplains, alkaline flats, and saline soils, including coastal areas, below 4000 ft. Already (alkaline, salty, floodplain), we get a hint that this is a plant that can fill some difficult niches. Get this: it achieves “optimum photosynthesis in desert areas at 44C”[2] – yes, at 111^o . THAT is tough. And indeed, quailbush loves crappy soils. It would be perplexed, possibly fatally, by rich, loamy, acid soils or clay: it likes well-drained soils, but that goes a long way. Quailbush grows in straight-up DG, sand – junk!

You will also read that quailbush doesn’t tolerate shade, but I have a young one under my palo brea and it’s doing great (because it’s Tucson).

Atriplex/ saltbush is used all over the arid world for slope stabilization and habitat reconstruction. In Jordan, along the shores of the intensely saline Dead Sea there are thick groves of A. halimus and leucoclada – quailbush’s Middle Eastern cousins. Along with tamarisk, their dense vegetation anchors the breeding ground for the Dead Sea sparrow, protected as an Audubon Important Bird Area (IBA).[3]

Atriplex is also commonly called “saltbush” because it is a halophyte – a salt-tolerant plant.

The plant uptakes salts from the soil and stores it in vacuoles. Eventually it surfaces onto the leaves, which are faintly furry.[4] They kind of sparkle. In Jordan saltbush (qattaf – قطف ) is an important source of forage for sheep and goats, but only in the winter and spring, after rains, before the salt has bloomed onto the surfaces of the leaves. In articles about quailbush in the American southwest there are concerns that this same uptake factor accumulates selenium – sometimes to toxic levels. It can, however, furnish up to 25% of a goat’s fodder.[5] In the Roman empire, medieval Europe, and the indigenous traditions of the southwest, quailbush was eaten by humans, and had a variety of medicinal uses.[6]

Used as a hedge. (https://www.calfloranursery.com/plants/atriplex-lentiformis-breweri)

And it makes a great hedge and screening plant. In my own garden quailbush is a hero. As I’ve mentioned, there was really not much plant matter here when I moved in. There was evidence of decades of human adventure – under the dog-poop and rockscape were various buried pavement projects, a fountain turned into a firepit, various disused segments of Tucson Water Department pipes, old adobe bricks, the “mano” for a metate, a horseshoe, handmade nails… But…

March 2022

Above is the northeast corner of my yard in March 2022. Note the vegetation? Ha. Eventually I screened this off as a utility area, and there where the trash bins are I planted one thing after another that promptly died. But finally I got a grip and planted the toughest plant I know (and love) – quailbush. See the first image, above, and today – that same viewshed. My hero: quailbush.

August 2025. That very back plant, tall enough to hide the screen that hides the utility area – quailbush.

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title image: University of Arizona Campus Arboretum – https://apps.cals.arizona.edu/arboretum/taxon.aspx?id=1295

[1] USDA states that quailbush is a subspecies of A lentiformis (ssp breweri), and “is limited to coastal regions of central and southern California and some nearby islands”

https://www.fs.usda.gov/database/feis/plants/shrub/atrlen/all.html#BOTANICAL%20AND%20ECOLOGICAL%20CHARACTERISTICS – but the Sonoran A lentiformis is called quailbush around here – and its broader leaf looks a lot like ssp. breweri…

[2] Pearcy, R. W.; Harrison, A. T. 1974. Comparative photosynthetic and respiratory gas exchange characteristics of Atriplex lentiformis (Torr.) Wats. in coastal and desert habitats. Ecology. 55(5): 1104-1111. [17722]

[3] The Fifth National Report on the Implementation of the Convention on  Biological Diversity, 2014. chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://www.cbd.int/doc/world/jo/jo-nr-05-en.pdf

[4] Floral Species as Environmental Quality Indicators in Jordan: High Salinity and Alkalinity Environments

Alhejoj, I.; Bandel, K.; Salameh, E. https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation?paperid=56522

[5] Calscape https://calscape.org/Atriplex-lentiformis-(Big-Saltbush)

[6] Castetter, E. F. 1935. Ethnobiological studies in the American Southwest. Biological Series No. 4: Volume 1. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico. 62; Bean, L.J.; Saubel, K.S. 1972. Telmalpakh: Chauilla Indian knowledge and usage of plants. Banning, CA: Malki Museum. 225.