Tree Spinach - Chenopodium giganteum
Favourite Photos
Species Description
Widespread and sparsely scattered casual throughout the UK. Rare but It is increasingly grown in gardens and allotments and may escape.
Stace 4:
Chenopodium giganteum D. Don (C. album ssp. amaranticolor Coste & A. Reyn.) - Tree Spinach.
Like C. album but usually much larger and extensively reddish-purple on stems and leaves; stems to 2m; leaves ovate-trullate to ovate-triangular, irregularly toothed but scarcely lobed, ≤14cm; tepals with indistinct keel abaxially; (2n=54). Neophyte-casual; tips and waste places mainly from wool; scattered in England and Central Scotland; India.
Key:
- Stems herbaceous; branchlets not bare and spinose at tips
- Flowers in racemes or panicles of heads usually <5mm across; perianth not turning red and succulent at fruiting
- Annual; stigmas <0.8mm
- Fruiting perianths wider than long, with horizontal seeds; inflorescence mealy or glabrous
- Leaves cuneate at junction with petiole
- Seeds with subacute to rounded unkeeled edges; tepals entire
- At least lower leaves distinctly toothed and / or lobed
- At least flowers and small branchlets conspicuously mealy; leaves various
- Testa irregularly pitted to almost featureless, often with radial and / or tangential furrows, sometimes with regular reticulum of slightly raised ridges but with flat (not concave) areas within
- Plant to 2m; young shoots usually extensively coloured reddish-purple; larger leaves ≤14cm, more or less always some >6cm, ovate-trullate to ovate-triangular