AMAEANTH FAMILY 73 



common in salt marshes, and are peculiar in their fleshy, 

 jointed stems, four to twenty inches tall, which are ap- 

 parently leafless, as the leaves are reduced to tiny scales. 

 The minute flowers are difficult to find, as they are im- 

 mersed in the thick upper joints. The stems are crisp 

 and salt to the taste, and in some countries are eaten 

 as a pot-herb and are pickled. 



AMAEANTH FAMILY (Amaranthaceae) 



Flowers minute, often papery, in spikes or heads. Petals lack- 

 ing. Sepals 2-5. Fruit minute, dry, one-seeded. 



Careless. Water-Hemp (Genus Acnida) 



The most remarkable of this family in Florida is an 

 annual weed known as careless, Acnida australis, a water- 

 hemp whose phenomenal gro\\i:h in one season from a 

 tiny seedling to a tree-like plant, twelve to twenty feet 

 in height, and a foot in diameter at the base, is a proof 

 of the fertility of the drained Everglades soil where it 

 grows. In this genus the stamens and pistils are on sepa- 

 rate plants. The staminate flowers, borne in spikes, have 

 five sepals, but in the seed-producing pistillate blossoms 

 sepals as well as petals are lacking. The alternate, entire, 

 slender-pointed leaves are sometimes a foot in length. 



Cotton-Weed (Genus Froelichia) 



Those whose interest in nature leads them occasionally 

 to open a manual of botany, and to use a magnifying 

 glass, find certain of the smaller flowers baffling. In the 

 case of this plant it is difficult to decide whether the tiny 

 papery tube inside the calyx is a toothed corolla to which 



