Plantae > Tracheophyta > Magnoliopsida > Caryophyllales > Amaranthaceae > Amaranthus > Amaranthus spinosus

Amaranthus spinosus (pigweed species; spiny amaranth; spiny amaranthus)

Synonyms:

Wikipedia Abstract

Amaranthus spinosus, commonly known as the spiny amaranth, spiny pigweed, prickly amaranth or thorny amaranth. It is native to the tropical Americas, but it is present on most continents as an introduced species and sometimes a noxious weed. It can be a serious weed of rice cultivation in Asia.
View Wikipedia Record: Amaranthus spinosus

Attributes

Allergen Potential [1]  Medium-High
Edible [2]  May be edible. See the Plants For A Future link below for details.
Flower Type [2]  Monoecious
Hazards [2]  No members of this genus are known to be poisonous, but when grown on nitrogen-rich soils they are known to concentrate nitrates in the leaves. This is especially noticeable on land where chemical fertilizers are used. Nitrates are implicated in stomach cancers, blue babies and some other health problems. It is inadvisable, therefore, to eat this plant if it is grown inorganically.
Lifespan [2]  Annual
Pollinators [2]  Wind, Bats
Structure [3]  Herb
Usage [2]  Yellow and green dyes can be obtained from the whole plant; A red pigment obtained from the plant (the report does not specify which part of the plant) is used as a colouring in foods and medicines;
Height [2]  24 inches (0.6 m)
View Plants For A Future Record : Amaranthus spinosus

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External References

USDA Plant Profile

NatureServe Explorer

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Derived from Allergy-Free Gardening OPALS™, Thomas Leo Ogren (2000)
♦ 2Plants For A Future licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
♦ 3Kattge, J. et al. (2011b) TRY - a global database of plant traits Global Change Biology 17:2905-2935
♦ 4Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
♦ 5HOSTS - a Database of the World's Lepidopteran Hostplants Gaden S. Robinson, Phillip R. Ackery, Ian J. Kitching, George W. Beccaloni AND Luis M. Hernández
♦ 6Ben-Dov, Y., Miller, D.R. & Gibson, G.A.P. ScaleNet 4 November 2009
♦ 7Red Siskin, BirdLife International (1992) Threatened Birds of the Americas. Cambridge, UK: BirdLife International.
♦ 8Robertson, C. Flowers and insects lists of visitors of four hundred and fifty three flowers. 1929. The Science Press Printing Company Lancaster, PA.
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0