New or notable species of Amaranthus* 
PAUL C. STANDLEY 
The two new species of Amaranthus described below were 
detected by the author while revising this genus for the North 
American Flora. It was scarcely to have been expected that many 
undescribed species would be discovered in this group, most of 
whose members are widely distributed weeds of waste or cultivated 
ground. Some of the West American species, however, are re- 
stricted locally to rocky canyons, gravelly mesas, and sandy 
beaches; it is to this group that the two new species belong. 
There are included here notes upon some of the earlier species 
which have not been well understood. The distribution of 
Amaranthus retroflexus is also discussed. 
Amaranthus Watsoni Standley sp. nov. 
Amaranthus Torreyi suffruticosus Uline & Bray, Bot. Gaz. 19: 272. 
1894. 
Stems stout or slender, 1.5 to 10 dm. high, erect or ascending, 
branched, obtusely angled, glandular-puberulent or short-villous, 
densely glandular above; petioles slender or stout, 0.5-6.5 cm. 
long; leaf blades rhombic-oval to rounded-ovate or oblong, I- 
8 cm. long, obtuse to truncate at the apex and usually emarginate 
or even deeply retuse, acutish or rounded at the base, sometimes 
slightly decurrent, rather thick, deep green or yellowish green, 
glandular-puberulent, at least beneath, often densely so on both 
surfaces; flowers dioecious, in axillary clusters, especially in the 
Pistillate plants, and in terminal, often paniculate, erect or droop- 
ing spikes, these 4-16 cm. long and 6-14 mm. in diameter; bracts 
lanceolate, longer than the flowers, attenuate to the subulate tips, 
glandular-puberulent ; sepals of the staminate flowers 3-4 mm 
long, oblong, obtuse or acutish, 1-nerved, the nerve excurrent 
sepals of the pistillate flowers slightly united at the base, broadly 
Spatulate, 2.5 mm. long, broadly rounded at the apex, usually 
emarginate, 1-nerved, the nerve sometimes excurrent in the outer 
Sepals; stamens 5; style branches 2; capsule subglobose, circum- 
scissile; seeds dark reddish brown, 0.6 mm. in diameter, rotund. 
* Published by permission of the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. 
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