362 AMARANTH FAMILY. 



rather slender purplish-tinged spikes collected in a terminal panicle. 

 Trop. Amer. 



A. Gangeticus, Linn. Cult, from E. Asia in many forms, usually under 

 the name A. melanch6licus or Love-lies-bleeding, or in the form 

 (used for carpet bedding) with foliage marked with red, violet, or yellow, 

 as A. tricolor. Often rather low, the stems and stalks red ; leaves 

 ovate and thin, petioled, dark purple or partly green ; or in a form grown 

 by the American Chinese as a pot herb, the herbage is entirely green. 

 Flowers mostly glomerate, on axillary and terminal branches. 



* * Green Amaranths, with the inflorescence and leaves green or nearly so. 



■i- Plant not spiny. 



** Tall and erect. 



A. retroflexus, Linn. Pigweed, Beetroot. A weed everywhere in 

 cultivated lands, with a slender red root; roughish or pubescent, the 

 leaves ovate or rhomb-ovate, with more or less undulate margins, long- 

 petioled, dull green, entire ; spikes thick and crowded into a stiff or 

 bunchy panicle ; sepals acute or obtuse. Trop. Amer. 



A. chlordstachys, Willd., also a common weed, is smoother and deeper 

 green, and has slender or flexuose spikes which are more spreading ; sepals 

 generally sharper. Trop. Amer. 



++ ** Decumbent or low and diffuse. 



A. albus, Linn. Tumbleweed. Pale green and smooth, the plant 

 low and diffusely branched, in autumn often forming a ball-like mass and 

 rolling before the wind ; leaves obovate and spatulate ; flowers all in 

 small clusters in their axils and covered by rigid sharp-pointed bracts ; 

 sepals 3 ; stamens 2 or 3. Common in waste grounds. 



A. blitoldes, Watson. Wild W. of the Mississippi and becoming a 

 weed along roadsides and railroads E.; prostrate or decumbent, often 

 reddish, forming a mat ; spikes narrow ; bracts short-acuminate ; seed 

 larger than in the last. 



■*- ■*- Plant with a pair of spines in the axil of each leaf. 



A. spindsus, Linn. Thorny A. Waste ground, chiefly S. ; leaves 

 dull green, rhomb-ovate or ovate-lanceolate ; flowers small, yellowish- 

 green, in round axillary clusters and in a long terminal spike. Trop. 

 Amer. 



3. ACNIDA, WATER HEMP. (Greek for nettle.) Three or four 

 confused species in our territory. The commonest are 



A. cann&bina, Linn. Salt marshes along the coast ; a tall annual, 

 like an Amaranth ; bracts inconspicuous, and the fleshy indehiscent fruit 

 3-5-angled and crested ; leaves lanceolate or narrower, acuminate and 

 long-stalked ; fruit indehiscent. 



A. tuberculata, Moq. In wet places, Mich., W. and S., not in salt 

 marshes ; generally tall and erect (low and decumbent forms) with lance- 

 olate, acute, or obtuse leaves, and regularly dehiscing fruit ; pistillate 

 flowers in dense clusters, in naked or leafy terminal spikes, (j) 



4. TEL ANTHER A. (Greek: complete anthers, referring to the 10 

 bodies being equal.) 



T. Bettzichiana, Eegel. (Alternanthera paronychioIdes of gar- 

 deners). A familiar bedding and edging plant from S. Amer. ; compact, 

 only a few inches high, with narrow spatulate or oblanceolate leaves, 

 which are blotched with orange, red, or crimson, or shaded with dull 

 purple. ® 



