304 AMARANTACE.E. (AMARANTH FAMILY.) 



ORDER 64. AMARANTACE-3E. (AMARANTH FAMILY.) 



Herbs with entire leaves destitute of stipules, small flowers which are 

 usually subtended by scarious bracts and have a persistent perianth of 

 1 to 5 more or less scarious sepals (sometimes wanting in Acnida), 

 hypogynous stamens as many as the sepals and opposite them or fewer, 

 a 1-celled ovary containing a single ovule, utricular in fruit. Flowers 

 perfect or unisexual, solitary or clustered, commonly 3-bracteate. 



* Anthers 2-celled: flowers unisexual: leaves alternate. 



1. Amarantus. Flowers monoecious or polygamous, all with a calyx of 3 or 5 (sometimes 



fewer) sepals. 



2. Acnida. Flowers dioecious. Calyx none in the fertile flowers. 



* * Anthers 1-celled : flowers perfect : leaves opposite. 



3. Cladothrix. Flowers minute, solitary or few in the axils. Filaments united at base 



into a cup. Densel^ stellate-tomentose, with petiolate leaves. 



4. Frrelichia. Flowers spicate. Filaments united into a tube. Hairy or woolly, with 



1. AMARANTUS, Tourn. AMARANTH. 



Sepals distinct or united at base. Stigmas 2 or 3, linear and sessile. Utricle 

 ovate, 2 to 3-beaked, circumscissile. Annual weeds, with leaves thin and 

 strongly reined, decurrent upon tfye slender petiole and apiculate with a short 

 setaceous mucro : flowers green or purplish, in axillary or spiked clusters or 

 spikelets. Staminate flowers usually mingled with the more numerous pistil- 

 late ones. 



* Sepals distinct, oblong-lanceolate, erect : flowers monoecious. 



*- Flowers in naked terminal and axillary mostly panicled spikes : sepals 5 : 



stems usually stout and erect, with long-petioled leaves. 



1. A. retroflGXUS, L- Roughish and more or less pubescent : dull green, 

 leaves large, orate to rhombic-ovate : flowers green, in thick erect or scarcely 

 spreading crowded spikes : bracts lanceolate, attenuate to a rigid awn. From 

 Mexico to British America. 



2. A. "Wrightii, Watson. Glabrous, erect and slender, reddish : leaves 

 small and thin, on slender petioles, oblong to narrowly lanceolate : spike erect, 

 narrow, and rather leafy : bracts solitary, subulate, awned as in the last. Proc. 

 Am. Acad. xii. 275. Colorado, in the Upper Arkansas Valley, and New 

 Mexico. 



*- *- Flowers in very small axillary spikes or clusters : sepals 3 : stems low or 

 prostrate, with smaller leaves. 



3. A. albus, L. Erect or ascending, diffusely branched from the base : 

 leaves oblong-spatulate to obovate, obtuse or retuse : bracts subulate, rigid, 

 pungently awned, the lateral ones very much smaller or wanting: sepals slightly 

 shorter than the rugose utricle: seed small, a third of a line broad. Watson, 

 Proc. Am. Acad. xii. 274. Throughout the United States as an introduced 

 weed, but doubtless indigenous within our range. 



