Ochradenus baccatus Del.

A glabrous, dioecious shrub, with slender young branches; old branches are spinescent. Leaves are linear. Inflorescence is a many-flowered raceme bearing yellow flowers with oblong-ovate sepals; petals are usually absent. Fruit is a globose, subsessile berry, white at maturity and turning red when drying with tuberculate, dark brown seeds.

Mediterranean region, Egyptian desert, Res Sea coastal strip, Gebel Elba and Sinai (St.Katherine).

Libya to Pakistan, Somalia, Ethiopia.

A desert shrub with pretty greenish-yellow flowers. J. Mueller (Monog. Resed. 95.1857) refers the straggling form to var. scandens Hochst et Steud ex Muell. (Sind, Stocks 409, K). The plant is browsed by cattle. The fruit is sweet and edible.

A straggling shrub, sometimes polygamous. Branches slender, greenish yellow when mature. Leaves 1-4 cm long, 1.5-2 mm broad, linear, acute. Flowers yellowish green, in dense terminal and rigid racemes 5-15 cm long. Bract c. 2.5 mm long, oblong. Pedicel 1 mm long, slightly longer in fruit. Bisexual flowers: Sepals 5(-6), ovate, 1 mm long. Petals absent or 2-3, less than 1 mm long, subulate; appendage more or less suborbiculate. Disc fleshy, surrounding the filaments and ovary. Stamens 10-12; filaments 1-2 mm long, fused at the base, deciduous. Female flowers: Petals absent or reduced. Ovary glabrous. Staminodes present. Berry 3-5 mm broad, white. Seeds c. 1.5 mm long, reniform, brown, papillose.

Distribution: Libya to Egypt, Ethiopia, Somaliland, Socotra, Middle East to S. Iran and Pakistan.

Fl.Per.: January-May.