Saltbush

Overview

Saltbush grows where little else will, on the salty edges of the pans and the rims of the Rimward Basins. Herds do not like it; they eat it when nothing else is left. In the second and third year of a dry cycle, when the rim pastures are bare and the Long Pan has not flooded, saltbush is the herds' last browse, and the stands are watched and shared like water.

Appearance

It is a dense, rounded shrub, knee- to waist-high, grey from a distance and silver-grey up close, its small, thick, oval leaves covered with fine scales that catch the light and taste of salt. Its stems are stiff and pale. After the storms it carries small clusters of inconspicuous flowers and then flat, papery, winged fruits, pink or straw-coloured, that rattle in the wind. A stand on a pan edge looks like a grey sea of low cushions, and it smells of nothing but dust.

Habitat and Range

It grows on salt and gypsum ground: the edges of the pans where the salt crust gives way to soil, the margins of dry washes, the lower slopes of rim spurs, and the inland edge facing the Glassbelt. It thins and stops where the true desert begins.

Behaviour and Temperament

Its roots run deep and wide for water, and its leaves pull salt from the soil and store it, which keeps them from drying out. It lives through years without rain, shrinking back, and puts out new growth after a storm.

Life Cycle

A saltbush lives many years, and a well-grazed stand regrows from its roots after a storm. Its winged fruits blow across the floors and seed new ground.

Uses and Dangers

Its use is survival. Herd beasts that eat it get water and a little food from its leaves, though it makes them thirsty, and a herd on saltbush must still be watered, at a cost in the cisterns. Herders under negotiated water-and-pasture rights treat the saltbush stands as a reserve, kept ungrazed in good years and opened by agreement in bad ones; a kindred caught grazing a reserve stand early is answering for it at the next gathering. In the leanest years its seeds are ground into a poor meal, and its ash goes into soap and the salt cutters' trade.

It is harmless, but a herd that lives on it too long sickens with the salt.

Lore and Belief

Rimward Orcs say saltbush is the land's last share, given only to those who kept their earlier shares honestly, and children are told not to break it in a good year. Herders say a saltbush stand in silver flower after a storm promises a second storm. A Rimward greeting asks whose water a stranger drank last; an old herders' answer, in a dry run, is "the saltbush's".

Raiders driven off in a dry cycle are said to have lived on saltbush for a whole season in the empty rims, and the songs of the Rimward feuds remember a band that came back from it lean as wolves and took its enemies' wells in a night.

Where It Appears

• Overview: Plants and Fungi