Common Name: GOOSEFOOT FAMILY
Habit: Annual to shrub; hairs simple, stellate, or glandular; plants in several genera scaly, mealy, or powdery from collapsed glands; monoecious, dioecious, with bisexual flowers, or with both bisexual and unisexual flowers. Stem: occasionally fleshy. Leaf: blade simple, generally alternate, occasionally fleshy or reduced to scales, veins pinnate; stipules 0. Inflorescence: raceme, spike, catkin-like, spheric head, axillary clusters of flowers, or flowers 1; bracts 0--5, herbaceous, generally persistent or strongly modified in fruit, wings, tubercles or spines present or 0. Flower: bisexual or unisexual, small, generally green; calyx parts (1)3--5, or 0 in pistillate flowers, free or fused basally (or +- throughout), leaf-like in texture, membranous, or fleshy, deciduous or not, often strongly modified in fruit; corolla 0; stamens 1--5, opposite sepals, filaments free, equal; anthers 4-chambered; ovary superior (1/2-inferior), chamber 1; ovule 1; styles, stigmas 1--4 (or stigmas sessile). Fruit: achene or utricle, generally falling with persistent calyx or bracts. Seed: 1, small, lenticular to spheric; seed coat smooth to finely dotted, warty, net-like, or prickly, margin occasionally winged.
Genera In Family: 100 genera, 1500 species: worldwide, especially deserts, saline or alkaline soils; some cultivated for food (Beta vulgaris subsp. vulgaris, beet, Swiss chard; Spinacia oleracea L., spinach; Chenopodium quinoa Willd., quinoa); and some worldwide, naturalized ruderal or noxious agricultural weeds. Note: Nitrophila treated in Amaranthaceae, Sarcobatus treated in Sarcobataceae. Key to genera revised by Elizabeth H. Zacharias to incorporate Extriplex and Stutzia, 2 genera segregated from Atriplex. Native spp. of Kochia now treated in Neokochia. Chenopodiaceae often treated now within a more broadly circumscribed Amaranthaceae (Morales-Briones et al. 2021).
eFlora Treatment Author: Mihai Costea, family description, key to genera, revised by Thomas J. Rosatti & Elizabeth H. Zacharias, except as noted
Scientific Editor: Bruce G. Baldwin, David J. Keil, Thomas J. Rosatti, Margriet Wetherwax.

Common Name: PICKLEWEED
Habit: Annual or subshrub, glabrous. Stem: generally many-branched, appearing jointed when young; internodes green to glaucous, fleshy when young. Leaf: opposite, sessile, decurrent; leaf pairs fused at base, enclosing stem. Inflorescence: spike, terminal, cylindric, dense; bracts leaf-like; flowers generally 3 per axil, sessile, sunken in fleshy bracts of distal internode, adherent to each other and to bracts, forming a 3-parted cavity at flower-fall. Flower: calyx fleshy, 3--4-lobed at tip, +- deciduous in fruit; stamens 1--2; stigmas 2--3. Fruit: wall membranous, free from seed. Seed: vertical; seed coat membranous, pale brown, hairy [papillate].
Etymology: (Greek: salt horn) Note: Needs study. Salicornia subterminalis moved to Arthrocnemum.
eFlora Treatment Author: Peter W. Ball
Reference: Kadereit at al. 2007 Taxon 56:1143--1170