Abstract: As an endemic plant of genus Calligonum in China, C.ebinuricum is only distributed in the vicinity area of Ebinur Lake in Xinjiang. The soil characteristics of C.ebinuricum were studied through a large number of field investigations in this study. The results showed that soil particle sizes in the habitats were concentrated at 0.25-0.5 mm and 0.5-1.0 mm, and the content of clay (<0.002 mm) was nearly zero. Such soil can be considered as coarse sandy soil under the Chinese soil texture classification criterion. The pH value changed from 7.98 to 10.24 with the averaged value of 8.9, leading to alkaline characteristics of soil in the habitats. The electric conductivity was 0.09-1.41 ms·cm^-1; the content of total salt was 0.525-8.400 g·kg^-1. The content of salt was low in the whole soil, while some areas showed saline characteristics. The majority of cations and anions were Ca²⁺ and SO^2-₄, respectively; the content of soil organic matters was low as 0.829-1.190 g·kg^-1, and that of soil organic carbon showed the same situation. By using SPSS Cluster Analysis and Principal Component Analysis, three types of soil habitats were defined for C.ebinuricum in this study, i.e., light salinization sand habitat with sulphate, alkaline sand soil habitat and ordinary sand soil habitat, of which the last one was the main habitat for C.ebinuricum. The population of C.ebinuricum could be renewed naturally in these three types of habitats, indicating that C.ebinuricum adapted to these three habitats. C.ebinuricum had the ecological characteristics, such as saline tolerance, alkaline resistance, infertile soil endurance and fitting to sand environment, which can be concluded from the characteristics of its habitats. Therefore, C.ebinuricum can be used not only as a sand-fixing plant in desert areas with light saline and alkaline, but also as a good plant for windbreak irrigated by relatively high salinity groundwater. The results in this study would give guidance to the application of C.ebinuricum as well as provide accumulative basis data for the further study on the relationship between soil and C.ebinuricum.

Key words: Calligonum ebinuricum, habitat, soil characteristics, soil types