Family 2. AMARANTHACEAE* 
By Pav, CARPENTER STANDLEY 
Herbs or shrubs, rarely trees, prostrate, erect, or rarely scandent. Leaves 
opposite or alternate, estipulate, membranaceous, coriaceous, or fleshy, petiolate 
or sessile, the blades usually entire. Flowers perfect, polygamous, or dioecious, 
bracteate and bibracteolate, or rarely in clusters of 2+5 and each cluster 
subtended by a bract and 2 bractlets, solitary, capitate, spicate, or racemose; 
bracts and bractlets usually hyaline, never foliaceous. Perianth regular or nearly 
so, rarely wanting, the segments commonly 5, sometimes 1-4, scarious, hyaline, 
or chartaceous, very rarely herbaceous, free or united at the base, usually 
erect, equal, or the inner ones usually smaller, glabrous or variously putbes- 
cent, usually green, white, or yellow, rarely red. Stamens as many as the 
perianth-segments or fewer, rarely more numerous, opposite the segments, 
hypogynous or perigynous; filaments free, or united into a short or elongate, 
4-10-lobed tube, the antheriferous lobes linear, subulate, or ligulate, entire 
or lobed, laciniate, or dentate, often with intermediate entire, dentate, or 
laciniate, short or elongate lobes (psetidostaminodia); anthers dorsifixed, 
short or elongate, 2- or 4-celled, dehiscent by introrse slits; pollen-grains 
minute, globose. Ovary ovoid, ellipsoid, or globose, superior, free or adnate 
to the base of the perianth, often compressed, sometimes obcordate, glabrous 
or pubescent, l-celled; styles 1 or 2, or wanting; stigma capitate, penicillate, or 
the stigmatic branches 2 or 3, short or elongate; ovules solitary or numerous, 
campylotropous, erect or suspended from the apex of an elongate basal funicle. 
Fruit a membranaceous or fleshy utricle, evalvate, indehiscent, irregularly 
dehiscent, or circumscissile. Seeds erect or inverted, lenticular, oblong, or 
reniform-orbicular, naked or arillate; testa crustaceous or coriaceous, usually 
lustrous, smooth, punctulate, or granulate; endosperm copious, farinaceous; 
embryo annular or hippocrepiform, the cotyledons incumbent, the radicle 
superior or inferior. 
Ovules 2 or more; anthers 4-celled. I. CELOSIEAE. 
Ovule solitary. 
Anthers 4-celled. 
Seed erect; radicle inferior; utricle dehiscent or indehiscent. TI. AMARANTHEAE. 
Seed inverted; radicle ascending or superior; utricle indehiscent. III. CENTROSTACHYDEAE. 
Anthers 2-celled. 
Stamens perigynous. IV. BRAYULINEAE. 
Stamens hypogynous. a 
Perianth-segments united into a tube, this indurate and 
variously appendaged in fruit. V. FROELICHIEAE. 
Perianth-segments usually free, unchanged in fruit. VI. GoMPHRENEAE. 
I. CELOSIEAE. Herbs or shrubs. Leaves alternate. Flowers perfect; 
perianth-segments free. Stamens hypogynous, the filaments connate at the 
* Published by permission of the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. 
VotumE 21, Part 2, 1917] 95 
