Tamarix gallica L. is a widespread tree that forms woodlands in the western Mediterranean Basin in saline habitats such as salt marshes, ravines, and rivers with brackish waters (Baum, 1978). This species is closely related to and commonly confused with T. canariensis Willd. because of their similar morphology, anatomy, and phenology (Villar et al., 2019). Hybridization is common in the genus Tamarix L., making the species delimitation of T. gallica not well resolved (Villar et al., 2019). In addition, this and various other species of Tamarix have been reported as widespread invasives in North America (Villar et al., 2019). Simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers (also referred to as microsatellites) are useful tools to help resolve species delimitation. Some microsatellite markers have already been described in the genus Tamarix (Gaskin et al., 2006; Terzoli et al., 2010, 2013; Zhang et al., 2019), but no study has focused on describing genomic SSR markers for T. gallica. Consequently, as part of a study of the genetic diversity and structure of T. gallica in the western Mediterranean Basin, the aim of this work is to characterize new polymorphic microsatellite markers for T. gallica. Cross-species amplification was also tested in 19 species of Tamarix to aid with future taxon delimitation studies and population genetic studies of the genus both in native and invaded areas, particularly with respect to hybridization. METHODS AND RESULTS DNA extraction was carried out from silica gel-dried leaves by a modified cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) method (Csiba and Powell, 2006). For the microsatellite library, 12 individuals of T. gallica and T. boveana Bunge were selected from two different populations. A microsatellite library enriched with TG, TC, AAC, AAG, AGG, ACG, ACAT, and ACTC motifs was prepared from the pooled DNA by Genoscreen (Lille, France) using a 454 GS-FLX (Roche Diagnostics, Meylan, France) high-throughput DNA sequencer (Malausa et al., 2011). Sequencing provided 22,418 reads with an average length of 220 bp. Raw sequences were searched for microsatellites with QDD version 3.1.2 (Meglécz et al., 2014) with default settings, which produced primers for 248 loci. To identify and eliminate known transposable elements and contaminants, these sequences were queried with RepeatMasker version open-4.0.3 (Smit et al., 2015) in the database Repbase version 20140131 (Bao et al., 2015), and with BLAST+ version 2.2.28+ (https ://blast.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Blast.cgi) in the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) nucleotide database. A total of 219 loci were developed for downstream testing. The number of primer pairs was reduced according to the following criteria (based on Guichoux et al., 2011 and Meglécz et al.,