Atriplex serenana A. Nels. ex Abrams

Herbs, annual, erect or sprawling, usually branched often forming tangled mats to 10 × (3-)5-20 dm, ascending branches sparsely scurfy. Leaves many, subsessile or very short petiolate; blade subconcolorous, lanceolate to oblong, elliptic, or oval, (8-)10-30(-40) × 3-12(-15) mm, margin sharply dentate to entire. Staminate flowers in glomerules in terminal spikes or panicles 3-20 cm, or reduced to solitary, rounded, terminal glomerule. Pistillate flower in small clusters, axillary. Fruiting bracteoles sessile or subsessile (stipe to 1 mm), cuneate-orbicular to obovate, somewhat compressed, 2.1-3.5 × (1.7-)2-3.7 mm, united ¹/2 of length, margin sharply and often slenderly toothed beyond middle, faces often rather strongly veined, smooth or with 1 or more slender or flattened appendages. Seeds brown, 1-1.3(-1.5) mm. 2n = 18.

Atriplex serenana is a species of saltbush known by the common names bractscale and stinking orach. It is native to California and Baja California, where it grows in saline and alkaline soils such as those on alkali flats and beach bluffs.

This is a mat-forming annual herb producing scaly stems up to a meter long. The toothed leaves are 1 to 4 centimeters long. The flowers are generally borne in hard clusters along the stem and there is sometimes a spikelike inflorescence of male flowers at the end of the stem.

There are two varieties of this species.

The rarer of the two, Davidson's saltscale (var. davidsonii), is limited to the coastline of southern California and Baja California.