PIGWEED FAMILY. Chenopodiaceae. 



covering. Spinach and Beets belong to this family; many 

 are "weeds," such as Lamb's Quarters. 



There are two kinds of Grayia, named after Asa Gray; 

 low shrubs; the stamens and pistils in separate flowers, on 

 the same or on different plants. 



An odd and beautiful desert shrub, 



op Sage about three feet high, very dense in form, 



Grayta spinosa . . . ' 



(G. polygaloldes) Wlth interlacing, angular, gray branches, 



Greenish, with spiny and crowded with small, alternate, 



red bracts toothless leaves, pale-green and thickish, 



5 pr jf g T but not stiff. The flowers are small and 



Calif., Ney., 



Utah, Ariz. inconspicuous, but the pistillate ones are 



enveloped in conspicuous bracts, which 

 enlarge and become papery in fruit, something like those 

 of Docks, and often change from yellowish-green to all 

 sorts of beautiful, bright, warm tints of pink, or to magenta, 

 and the branches become loaded with beautifully shaded 

 bunches of these curious seed-vessels, giving a strange, 

 crowded look to the shrub, which in favorable situations, 

 such as the Mohave Desert, makes splendid masses of 

 color, especially when contrasted with the pale gray of 

 Sage-brush. 



There is only one kind of Cycloloma; leaves alternate, 

 smooth or downy, irregularly toothed; flowers perfect or 

 pistillate, with five sepals, five stamens, and two or three 

 styles; fruit winged horizontally. 



Very curious round plants, six to 

 Tumbleweed twenty inches high, usually purple all 

 Cycloloma . _... 



airiplidfolium over sometimes green and rarely white, 

 Purple or green giving a brilliant effect in the fall to the 

 Summer sandy wastes they inhabit. They are a 



West of Mis- mass Q interlacing branches, with hardly 

 sissippi River 



any leaves, except at the base, and very 



small flowers. When their seeds are ripe, and they are 

 dry and brittle, the wind easily uproots them and starts 

 them careening across the plain, their seeds flying out by 

 the way. They turn over and over and leap along, as if 

 they were alive, bringing up at last against a wire fence, or 

 some such obstacle, where perhaps a traveler sees them 

 from the train and wonders at the extraordinary-looking, 

 dry, round bunches. There are other Tumble-weeds, 

 such as Tumbling Mustard, Sisymbrium allissimum, and 

 Amardnthus dlbus, not of this family. 



