Herbs, annual, prostrate, sometimes tinged red, 1-6 dm, forming tangled masses 3-10 dm diam., lightly scurfy when young. Leaves numerous, sessile or proximal short petiolate; blade greenish adaxially, paler abaxially, oblanceolate to spatulate-elliptic or oval, (3-)5-18 × 1-8 mm, margin entire, more scurfy abaxially. Staminate flowers in glomerules largely in distal bractless axils, thus short spicate; calyx 5-cleft. Pistillate flowers in proximal axils. Fruiting bracteoles subsessile or stipe to 0.3 mm, suborbiculate to obovate, 1-1.5(-2) × 1.1-1.8 mm, united to middle, margin minutely 3-5-toothed at apex, otherwise entire, apex green, faces smooth or rarely tuberculate. Seeds light brown, 0.8-1 mm. Flowering early spring-fall. Mainly on sea bluffs; 0-100 m; Calif.; Mexico (Baja California). The name Atriplex ramosissima was published by Moquin-Tandon as a synonym, based on a name on a specimen in Nuttall´s herbarium.

Plant: Annual generally 1-3 dm, mat-like; stems prostrate to decumbent; branches ascending, scaly, becoming ± glabrous Leaves: blade 4-18 mm, elliptic to oblanceolate, gray- to white-scaly below, greenish above, base tapered INFLORESCENCE: Staminate inflorescence: spike, terminal; bracts 0; Pistillate inflorescence: bracts in fruit 1-1.5 mm, fused ± to middle, obovate to ± round, smooth or few-tubercled, entire, tip ± truncate, minutely 3-5-toothed Flowers: Staminate flower: calyx lobes 3-5; stamens 3-5; Pistillate flower: calyx ± 0; ovary ovoid to spheric, style branches 2 Fruit: Seed ± 0.8 mm, brown, erect Misc: Bluffs, scrub; < 100 m.