AMARANTACEAE. 147 



AMARANTACEAE. Amaranth Family. 



Annual or perennial herbs with simple entire leaves without stipules. Flow- 

 ers small, usually greenish, inconspicuous, perfect or unisexual. Calyx of 3 to 5 

 sepals, or sometimes only 1. always persistent and more or less scarious. Corolla 

 none. Stamens 5, sometimes fewer. Ovary superior, 1-celled, with 2 or 3 

 stigmas. Fruit a utricle or bursting irregularly or circumscissile. Embryo 

 curved. 



AMARANTHUS L. Amaranth. 



Coarse annual weeds with petioled leaves and small green or sometimes pur- 

 plish regular flowers, disposed in axillary or terminal spikes or clusters. Flowers 

 polygamous or monoecious, with bractlets at base, staminate and pistillate 

 flowers commonly in same cluster. (Greek a-, not, and maraino, to fade, the 

 spikes of certain species retaining their color in drying.) 



Fruit dehiscent, the top falling away as a lid. 



Flowers in dense terminal and axillary spikes; sepals 5 A. retroflexus. 



Flowers in small axillary clusters or spikelets. 



Sepals 3; plant erect, bushy-branched 2. A. graecicans. 



Sepals 3, or in the fertile flower 1; stems prostrate or ascending. ... 3. .A. calif omicus. 

 Fruit indehiscent; sepals 3; plant prostrate 4. A. deflexus. 



1. A. retroflexus L. Rough Pigweed. Stoutish, commonly branched 

 from the base, 1 to 3 ft. high; herbage dull green, roughish or pubescent; 

 leaves from rhombic to oblong-ovate, petioled ; flowers green, densely crowded 

 in erect or slightly spreading axillary and terminal spikes, 1 to 1% in. long; 

 bracts lanceolate-subulate, scarious, except the green carinate midrib, 1% to 3 

 lines long; sepals 5, oblong-lanceolate, cuspidate, 1 line long or less; fruit cir- 

 cumscissile; seed rather less than % line broad, black and shining. 



Very common in uncultivated orchards, gardens and waste lands. Introduced 

 from tropical America. 



2. A. graecizans L. Tumble Weed. Herbage light green; stems freely 

 and rigidly branching, 1 to 3 or 4 ft. high, commonly of bushy outline ; leaves 

 small, oblong-spatulate or obovate; flowers in clusters in short axillary spike- 

 lets; bracts subulate 1 to 2% lines long; sepals 3, oblong-lanceolate, shorter 

 than the somewhat rugose utricle. — (A. albus L.) 



Summer weed; extremely abundant in cultivated fields. The plant becomes 

 rigid when dead and dry, and when loosened by fall winds is carried across 

 the fields, the seeds being thus effectively dispersed. 



3. A. californicus Wats. Stems stoutish or rather fleshy, prostrate or 

 ascending, branching at the base, with numerous short branchlets; leaves obo- 

 vate to oblong, often with white veins and margin, 1 in. long or less, including 

 the petiole; flowers green or reddish in many small axillary clusters; sepals 3, 

 or in the pistillate or fertile flower 1; bracts often inconspicuous, shorter than 

 or a little exceeding the utricle; utricle somewhat rugose, at length circum- 

 scissile. 



Moist soils. South Coast Eanges. 



4. A. deflexus L. Stems slender, prostrate, 1 to 1% ft. long; leaves rhom- 

 bic-ovate; flowers in shorter spikelets clustered in axils of leaves or disposed 

 in dense terminal spikes 1 in. long or more; sepals 3 



Introduced from southern Europe; gardens at Berkeley; Petaluma. 



NYCTAGINACEAE. Four-o'clock Family. 



Ours succulent herbs with opposite entire petioled leaves and swollen joints. 

 Flowers perfect, delicate. Involucre of several distinct bracts subtending a 



