Spinach 57 



plant with the prevailing round leaves; but the lobing is 

 mostly less marked and the leaves are broader than in the 

 older types. 



Spinach is mostly dioecious — the sexes separated in 

 flowers on different plants. After flowering, the staminate 

 or male plant usually ceases to grow and dies, while the 

 pistillate or female plant continues to grow to ripen its 

 crop of seed. This may account for some of the " poor 

 plants " in seeding spinach rows. 



The Spinach Plant 



Spinacia. A genus of four or less species, annual herbs, 

 of southwestern Asia, member of the Chenopodiacete or Goose- 

 foot Family, and therefore closely related to the beet. 



S. oleracea, Linn. Sp. PI. 1027. (S. spinosa, Moench, Meth. 

 318. 1794.) Prickly-seeded Spinach. Annual, dioecious; 

 plant smooth and glabrous throughout, tap-rooted, producing 

 abundant crown-leaves in the cool season when young, in warm 

 weather soon sending out an erect simple or branched leafy 

 stem (and sometimes supplementary stems) 6 in. to 2 ft. tall: 

 leaves all petioled, various in shape and size, the margins 

 entire, acute or obtuse at the apex; radical leaves in the 

 presumably more primitive races narrowly oblong to ovate- 

 oblong, in the more developed races ovate to round-ovate and 

 sometimes several inches long, the petiole shorter or longer 

 than the blade, base of blade obtuse and semi- or unequally 

 cordate or truncate or with downward-extending or outward- 

 extending pointed narrow lobes, sometimes with extra lobes 

 below and above as if the leaf were inclined to be compound ; 

 stem leaves smaller, alternate, oblong to broad-ovate, becoming 

 lanceolate in the inflorescence, very various in size and lobing 

 or in absence of lobing, the petioles usually conspicuously long : 

 flowers apetalous, small and practically uncolored (green), the 

 staminate mostly forming leafless spikes or panicles of sessile 

 or stalked glomerules, the pistillate flowers several to many 

 and sessile in the axils of leaves or of leafy bracts ; staminate 



