AMARANTH FAMILY. 



173 



Flowers 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. 



AMARANTH US L. Amaranth. 

 Coarse annual weeds with petioled leaves and small green or some- 

 times purplish regular flowers, disposed in axillary or terminal spikes 

 or clusters. Flowers polygamous or monoecious, with bracts 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 . . 1. A. retroflexus. 

 Flowers in small axillary clusters or spikelets; 



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



Sepals 3, or in the fertile flower 1; stems prostrate or ascending 



3. A. Californicus. 



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



1. A. retroflexus L. PvOtjgii Pigweed. Stoutish, slightly 

 puberulent with few erect or ascending branches from the base, 1 to 2 

 ft. long, simple or paniculately branched above; 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, to 3 lines long; sepals 

 5, oblong-lanceolate, cuspidate, 1 line long or less; fruit circum- 

 scissile; seed rather less than £ line broad, black and shining. 



Very common in uncultivated orchards, gardens and waste lands. 



2. A. albus L. Tumble Weed. Herbage light green; stems 

 freely and rigidly branching, 1 to 3 or 4 ft. high, commonly of bushy 

 outline; leaves oblong-spatulate or obovate-ovate; flowers in clusters 

 in short axillary spikelets; bracts subulate 1 to 2h lines long; sepals 

 3, oblong-lanceolate, shorter than the somewhat rugose utricle. 



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, pros- 

 trate or ascending, branching at the base, with numerous short 

 branchlets; leaves obovate to oblong, often with white veins and mar- 

 gin, 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 i; bracts often inconspicuous, shorter than or a little exceeding 

 the utricle; utricle somewhat rugose, at length circumscissile. 



Moist soils. South Coast Ranges. 



4. A.deflexusL. Stems slender, prostrate, 1 to 1} ft. long; leaves 

 rhombic-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. 



