Common Name: AMARANTH FAMILY
Habit: Annual to subshrub; monoecious and/or dioecious; occasionally spiny; hairs simple (branched). Leaf: blade simple, alternate or opposite, margins entire or serrate; veins pinnate; stipules 0. Inflorescence: axillary or terminal; 3-flowered cymes in dense spikes, heads or panicles; bracts 0 or 1--5, persistent; bractlets 0--2. Flower: bisexual or unisexual, small, green (+- white), yellow or purple; perianth parts 0 or (1)3--5, free or fused basally, scarious or hardened, persistent; stamens 1--5, opposite perianth parts, free or basally fused as a tube, generally unequal, occasionally alternate with appendages on stamen tubes (pseudostaminodes), anthers 2- or 4-chambered; ovary superior, chamber 1; ovule 1 (2--many); style (0)1--3, stigmas 1--3(5). Fruit: utricle; generally with persistent perianth or bracts. Seed: 1 [2+], small, lenticular to spheric, smooth or dotted to striate or tubercled.
Genera In Family: +- 75 genera, 900 species: cosmopolitan, especially disturbed, arid, saline or alkaline soils; some cultivated for food, ornamental; many naturalized, ruderal or agricultural weeds. Note: Amaranthaceae including Chenopodiaceae by some. Polycnemoideae, represented in California by Nitrophila, formerly considered subfamily of Chenopodiaceae, but needs further research. Guilleminea densa (Willd.) Moq. var. aggregata Uline & W.L. Bray is a waif. Froelichia gracilis (Hook.) Moq. possibly naturalized.
eFlora Treatment Author: Mihai Costea, except as noted
Scientific Editor: Douglas H. Goldman, Bruce G. Baldwin.

Habit: Annual or subshrub, canescent to densely woolly, or glabrous in age; hairs forked. Leaf: generally opposite, occasionally alternate at base, sessile or short-petioled, petiole <= 2.5 mm; blade round to lanceolate, cordate, base wedge-shaped or oblique, tip acute to obtuse, margins entire, papery to fleshy. Inflorescence: axillary head-like cymes, flowers 1--3(5), sessile, +- enclosed by 2 +- opposite leaves hardened and fused in age; bracts, bractlets persistent, ovate, scarious, woolly. Flower: bisexual; perianth parts 5, free, keeled, outer 3 > inner 2, scarious or leathery, glabrous or woolly, tip acute or obtuse; stamens 5, filaments fused at base into short tube, anthers 2-chambered, pseudostaminodes 0 or short, triangular, +- 0.2 mm; ovary +- spheric, ovule 1, style 0 or short, +- 0.1 mm, stigmas 2-lobed, deltoid (irregularly 3-lobed). Fruit: +- spheric, wall membranous. Seed: obovoid, brown-red.
Etymology: (Ivar T. Tidestrom, Swedish-born botanist of southwest United States, 1864--1956)