Smallflower Tamarisk

This taxon is perhaps introduced in Pakistan.

Tall shrub, 4 m high, with reddish brown bark. Leaves simple, alternate, sessile, ovate with somewhat auriculate base, 3-5 mm long 1-1.5 mm broad, acuminate. Racemes lateral, vernal, 24 cm long c. 5 mm broad. Flowers pinkish, tetra and pentamerous but more often tetramerous. Bracts longer than pedicel, trullate ovate, acuminate with a diaphanous blunt end, apex subobtuse, membranous at the margin, c. 2 mm long, c. 1 mm broad, pedicel c. 1 mm long. Calyx fused at the base, outer sepals acute, inner obtuse, ovate, denticulate, membranous at the margin, c. 1.5 mm long, 1 mm broad. Petals oblong, obovate, somewhat parabolic, 2-2.25 (-2.5) mm long, 1 mm broad, persistent, rarely subpersistent. Stamens 4 or 5 (depending upon tetra or pentamerous flowers), 3.54 mm long, filaments filiform confluent with the disc lobe, (epilophic disc), anthers 1 mm long, ovate, apiculate, Stigmas 3, somewhat club shaped, ovary conic. Capsule trigonous, c. 4 mm long, c. 2 mm broad.

Distribution: Turkey, Greece, Yogoslavia, Albania, Italy & Spain, introduced elsewhere.

Fl. Per.: May.

Tamarix parviflora is a species of tamarisk known by the common name smallflower tamarisk.

It is native to south-eastern Europe (in Albania, East Aegean Islands, Greece, Crete, , Turkey, Turkey-in-Europe, Yugoslavia and to Iran and Palestine, (in Western Asia). It has been introduced elsewhere, in places such as; Algeria, Austria, Cape Provinces, Corsica, Italy, Libya, Mexico, Pakistan, Sicily, Spain, West Himalayas and western North America (Arizona, California, Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon and Texas), where it is an invasive introduced species.

It easily inhabits moist habitat, especially in saline soils. It is a shrub or tree growing up to about 5 meters tall. The branching twigs are covered in tiny linear leaves no more than 2 or 3 millimetres long. The inflorescence is a dense spike with flowers 1 to 4 centimeters long. Each tiny flower has four pink petals.

It was first published and described by Augustin Pyramus de Candolle in Prodr. vol.3 on page 97 in 1828.