THE PIGWEED FAMILY, AMARANTACEsE. 



The Pigweeds are a small family of plants, mostly of tropical origin, 

 very closely allied with the Chenopods or Spinach family. All of them with 

 us are coarse weedy annuals of rich land in gardens and ou farms. The 

 flowers are small and inconspicuous, and they produce enormous quantities 

 of small highly polished, lens-shaped, more or less margined seeds. The 

 leaves are simple and petioled. Some of the exotic members of this family 

 are gorgeously coloured and are grown for their ornamental foliage or in- 

 florescence, as the Cockscombs (Celosia), the Rainbow Amaranth, Amarantus 

 tricolor, and the well known Love-lies-bleeding, Amarantus caudatus, L. 

 The seeds are Icrne singly as in the Spinach family, and enclosed in a. thin 

 cartilaginous covering known botanically as a utricle. 



PLATE 42. 



REDROOT PIGWEED, Amarantus rctroflcxas, L. 



Other English names : Rough Pigweed, Chinaman's Greens. 



(Noxious: N.W.) 



Introduced. Annual, with a rosy nink tap-root. Stems erect simnle or 

 branched, rough pubescent. Leaves long-petioled, ovate, bristle-pointed. 

 Flowers inconspicuous, numerous, crowded on thick compound spikes at the 

 ends of the branches and in the axils of the leaves. Bracts of the flowers 

 bristle-pointed, longer than the green sepals. Seed [Plate 54, fig. 36 natural 

 size and enlarged 8 times'] highly polished, reddish blaclc to jet black, about 

 ..',- of an inch in diameter, circular or egg-shaped in outline, mxich flattened 

 and equally convex on both sides ; poorly filled seeds have a narrow slightly 

 flattened marginal band, which marks the location of the ring-like embryo 

 lying round the outside of the seed. The basal scar is a light point on the 

 edge of the seed where the two tips of the embryo meet, and has a low de- 

 pression around it on both faces of the seed. 



Time of Flowering : July to September; seed ripe by August. 

 Propagation : By seed. 



Occurrence : In all crops. Thoroughly established in all the settled por- 

 tions of the Dominion. Abundant in waste places around farm buildings 

 and in gardens. Widely spread by the seeds, which occur commonly in all 

 commercial seeds. 



Injury : A large weedy plant which crowds crops and increases the labour 

 of working land. Seeds common in those of grasses and clovers, 



Remedy : Can be controlled by shallow cultivation and hand-pulling. 



The TUMBLE WEED, Amarantus albus, L. Another Amaranth which is 

 very abundant throughout the country, but particularly so in the West, is 

 the Tumble Weed, a bushy branched erect or procumbent annual weed with 

 whitish stems and small oval or spatulate leaves, in the axils of most of 

 which, on old plants, are small clusters of flowers or seeds. When mature. 



80 



