''Salsola kali'' is the restored botanical name for a species of flowering plants in the amaranth family that has been treated as ''Kali turgidum''. It is native to

Macaronesia Macaronesia (; ) is a collection of four volcanic archipelagos in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlantic, North Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of North Africa and Europe. Each archipelago is made up of a number of list of islands in the Atlantic Oc ...

, and from the Atlantic coasts of Europe to the

Baltic Sea The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by the countries of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and the North European Plain, North and Central European Plain regions. It is the ...

and the Mediterranean (although it has been introduced elsewhere). It is an annual plant which grows primarily in the

temperate In geography, the temperate climates of Earth occur in the middle latitudes (approximately 23.5° to 66.5° N/S of the Equator), which span between the tropics and the polar regions of Earth. These zones generally have wider temperature ran ...

biome, in salty sandy coastal soils.Sabrina Rilke: ''Revision der Sektion Salsola s.l. der Gattung Salsola (Chenopodiaceae)''. In: ''Bibliotheca Botanica.'' Vol. 149, 1999,
(Summary online)
It is commonly known as prickly saltwort or prickly glasswort. In dry inland places it is replaced by '' Salsola tragus'' (syn. ''Kali tragus'' or ''Salsola kali'' subsp. ''tragus''), which is less tolerant to salty soils, and has spread more widely from Eurasia to other continents. ''Salsola kali'' is less widespread as an

introduced species An introduced species, alien species, exotic species, adventive species, immigrant species, foreign species, non-indigenous species, or non-native species is a species living outside its native distributional range, but which has arrived ther ...

in America.

Taxonomy

The species was first described in 1753 as ''Salsola kali'' by

Carl Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné,#Blunt, Blunt (2004), p. 171. was a Swedish biologist and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming o ...

in ''

Species Plantarum ' (Latin for "The Species of Plants") is a book by Carl Linnaeus, originally published in 1753, which lists every species of plant known at the time, classified into genus, genera. It is the first work to consistently apply binomial nomenclature ...

''. Until 2007, it belonged to genus ''

Salsola ''Salsola'' is a genus of the subfamily Salsoloideae in the family Amaranthaceae. The genus ''sensu stricto'' is distributed in Australia, central and southwestern Asia, North Africa, and the Mediterranean. Common names of various members of this ...

'' (''sensu lato''), but after molecular genetical research, it was proposed that the genus be split, and the species placed into the genus ''

Kali Kali (; , ), also called Kalika, is a major goddess in Hinduism, primarily associated with time, death and destruction. Kali is also connected with transcendental knowledge and is the first of the ten Mahavidyas, a group of goddesses who p ...

'' Mill. (syn. ''Salsola'' sect. ''Kali'' Dum.).Hossein Akhani, Gerald Edwards, Eric H. Roalson: ''Diversification Of The Old World Salsoleae s.l. (Chenopodiaceae): Molecular Phylogenetic Analysis Of Nuclear And Chloroplast Data Sets And A Revised Classification'' In: ''International Journal of Plant Sciences'', 168(6), 2007: 931–956. In the genus ''Kali'', the valid name is ''Kali turgidum'' (Dumort.) Guterm. (incorrectly as "turgida", basionym: ''Salsola turgida'' Dumort.). The name ''Kali soda'' Moench used by Akhani et al. (2007) is invalid because of the older name ''Kali soda'' Scop. (a synonym of ''

Salsola soda ''Soda inermis'', the opposite-leaved saltwort, oppositeleaf Russian thistle, or barilla plant, is a small (to 0.7 m tall), annual, succulent shrub that is native to the Mediterranean Basin.Walter Gutermann: ''Notulae nomenclaturales 41–45. Neue Namen bei Cruciata und Kali sowie einige kleinere Korrekturen.'' In: ''Phyton (Horn).'' 51 (1), 2011, p. 98. ,

Plants of the World Online Plants of the World Online (POWO) is an online taxonomic database published by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. History Following the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew launched Plants of the World Online i ...

subsumed all ''Kali'' species into ''Salsola''. ''Salsola kali'' belongs to tribe Salsoleae s. str. ''Salsola kali'' and other closely related species form a species complex (''Salsola kali''-aggregate or formerly ''Kali tragus''-aggregate).Uotila, P. (2011): Chenopodiaceae (pro parte majore). – In: Euro+Med Plantbase - the information resource for Euro-Mediterranean plant diversity. - ''Salsola kali''
/ref> Some authors treat these species only on subspecies level. Then ''Salsola kali'' would be the valid name for the whole species complex, and the former ''Kali turgidum'' would be a subspecies of it. It was previously thought that ''Salsola kali'' had two subspecies: * ''Salsola kali'' subsp. ''tragus'', syn. ''Kali tragus'', now treated as '' Salsola tragus'', a common weed of disturbed habitats, commonly known as prickly Russian thistle, windwitch, common saltwort, or tumbleweed. * ''Salsola kali'' subsp. ''kali'', syn. ''Kali turgidum'', now simply treated as 'Salsola kali'', a salt-resistant plant restricted to the shores of the Baltic Sea, North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, commonly known as prickly saltwort. , no subspecies were accepted by Plants of the World Online. In 2014, Mosyakin et al. proposed to conserve ''Salsola kali'' (= ''Kali turgidum'') as nomenclatoral type for the genus ''

''. This is now accepted, with many species of genus ''Kali'' restored to ''Salsola'', with some

Palaearctic The Palearctic or Palaearctic is a biogeographic realm of the Earth, the largest of eight. Confined almost entirely to the Eastern Hemisphere, it stretches across Europe and Asia, north of the foothills of the Himalayas, and North Africa. Th ...

species placed in the genus '' Soda''.

Alkali and soda ash

The plant is a

halophyte A halophyte is a salt-tolerant plant that grows in soil or waters of high salinity, coming into contact with saline water through its roots or by salt spray, such as in saline semi-deserts, mangrove swamps, marshes and sloughs, and seashores. ...

, i.e. it grows where the water is salty, and the plant is a

succulent In botany, succulent plants, also known as succulents, are plants with parts that are thickened, fleshy, and engorged, usually to retain water in arid climates or soil conditions. The word ''succulent'' comes from the Latin word ''sucus'', meani ...

, i.e. it holds much salty water. When the plant is burned, the sodium in the salt ends up in the chemical

sodium carbonate Sodium carbonate (also known as washing soda, soda ash, sal soda, and soda crystals) is the inorganic compound with the formula and its various hydrates. All forms are white, odourless, water-soluble salts that yield alkaline solutions in water ...

. Sodium carbonate has a number of practical uses, including especially as an ingredient in making glass, and making soap. In the medieval and early modern centuries the ''Kali'' plant and others like it were collected at tidal marshes and seashores. The collected plants were burned. The resulting ashes were mixed with water. Sodium carbonate is soluble in water. Non-soluble components of the ashes sank to the bottom of the water container. The water with the sodium carbonate dissolved in it was then transferred to another container, and then the water was evaporated off, leaving behind the sodium carbonate. Another major component of the ashes that is soluble in water is potassium carbonate. The resulting product consisted mainly of a mixture of sodium carbonate and potassium carbonate. This product was called "soda ash" (was also called "alkali"). Soda ash extracted from the ashes of ''Salsola kali'' contains as much as 30% sodium carbonate. The soda ash was used primarily to make glass (secondarily used as a cleaning agent). Another notable halophilic plant that was collected for the purpose was ''

Soda inermis ''Soda inermis'', the opposite-leaved Salsola, saltwort, oppositeleaf Russian thistle, or barilla plant, is a small (to 0.7 m tall), annual, succulent shrub that is native to the Mediterranean Basin.Halogeton sativus ''Halogeton'' is a plant genus of the family Amaranthaceae. The genus name, ''Halogeton'', derives from the Greek words for "salt" and for "neighbor."Holmgren, Ned A. (2004).''Halogeton''C. A. Meyer" in ''Flora of North America: North of MexicVol ...

''. Historically in the late medieval and early post-medieval centuries the word "kali" could refer to any such plants. (The words "alkali" and "kali" come from the Arabic word for soda ash, , where is the definite article.) Today such plants are also called

saltwort Saltwort is a common name for various genera of flowering plants that thrive in salty environments, typically in coastal salt marshes and seashores, including: :*'' Salsola'' and related genera within subfamily '' Salsoloideae'' :*''Salicornia'' :* ...

s, referring to their relatively high salt content. Because of their use historically in making glass, they are also called

glasswort The glassworts are various succulent, annual halophytic plants, that is, plants that thrive in saline environments, such as seacoasts and salt marshes. The original English glasswort plants belong to the genus '' Salicornia'', but today the gla ...

s. In Spain the saltwort plants were called ''barilla'' and were the basis of a large industry in Spain in the 18th century; see

barilla ''Barilla'' refers to several species of salt-tolerant (halophyte) plants that, until the 19th century, were the primary source of soda ash and hence of sodium carbonate. The word "barilla" was also used directly to refer to the soda ash obtain ...

. In the early 19th century, plant sources were supplanted by synthetic sodium carbonate produced using the

Leblanc process The Leblanc process was an early industrial process for making ''soda ash'' ( sodium carbonate) used throughout the 19th century, named after its inventor, Nicolas Leblanc. It involved two stages: making sodium sulfate from sodium chloride, fol ...

Taxonomy

Alkali and soda ash

See also

References

Further reading