AMARANTHACEAE 191 



with yellow, pink, red, or purple flowers, the tips of the spikes variously 

 fasciated. It has not been found as a spontaneous plant here. Tropics 

 generally, cultivated and as an escape. 



3. GOMPHRENA Linnaeus 



Erect, branched, hirsute or villous herbs, the nodes usually thickened. 

 Leaves opposite. Flowers in peduncled heads, white or purple. Sepals 5, 

 lanceolate, acuminate. Stamens 5; filaments united into a long tube, 

 cleft at the top, usually without staminodes. Ovary 1-celled, 1-ovuled; 

 style short or long; stigmas 2. Utricle compressed, indehiscent. (Prom 

 the Greek name of an allied plant.) 



Species about 70 in South America and Australia, the following now 

 cosmopolitan in the tropics. 



1. G. GLOBOSA L. Botoncillo (Sp.-Fil.). 



An erect, branched, pubescent annual, the branches more or less 

 thickened and often purplish at the nodes. Leaves petioled, oblong, acute 

 or obtuse, 7 to 11 cm long. Flowers numerous, densely crowded in globose 

 heads, the heads white, pink, or purple, solitary, peduncled, 1.5 to 2 cm in 

 diameter, subtended by 2 leafy bracts. Bracteoles 8 to 10 mm long, en- 

 closing the flowers, lateral, keeled. Sepals pubescent. (Fl. Filip. pi. 68.) 



Commonly cultivated for ornamental purposes, occasionally spontaneous, 

 fl. all the year. Undoubtedly a native of tropical America, now wild or 

 cultivated in most warm and tropical countries. 



4. ALTERNANTHERA Forskal 



Prostrate or spreading branched herbs with opposite leaves. Flowers 

 small, white, in axillary, sessile or subsessile, solitary or clustered hea4s. 

 Sepals unequal, three flattened, the inner and lateral two concave. Stamens 

 2*to 5, filaments short, connate into a short cup, with or without alter- 

 nating staminodes; anthers 1-celled. Ovary 1-celled, 1-ovuled; stigma 

 subsessile. Utricle compressed, ovoid tp obcordate, margins often winged 

 or thickened. (Latin "alternate" and "anther.") 



Species about 16 in most tropical and subtropical countries, 3 or 4 in 

 the Philippines. 



1. Glabrous or nearly so. 

 2. Spreading; leaves elliptic-lanceolate to linear-lanceolate, green. 



1. A. sessilis 

 2. Usually erect; leaves spatulate to oblong-obovate ; cultivated plants, 



the leaves variegated with red 2. A. versicolor 



1. Younger parts and heads rather densely hirsute 3. A. fnitescens 



1. A. SESSILIS (L.) R. Br. 



A spreading or prostrate much-branched herb, the branches up to 60 

 cm long, the ultimate ones with 2 lines of hairs on the internodes, the 

 flowering ones ascending. Leaves glabrous or nearly so, elliptic-lanceolate 

 to linear-lanceolate, acute or obtuse, sessile, obscurely toothed. Heads 

 axillary, solitary or clustered, globose to oblong, white, 5 to 7 mm long. 

 Sepals lanceolate, acute or acuminate, 2 to 2.5 mm long. Stamens 2 or 3 . 

 Utricle broadly obcordate. 



In open waste places, common, fl. all the year; throughout the Philippines. 



Tropics generally. 



