Amaranthaceae-Amaranth or pigweed family
The amaranth or pigweed family, amaranthaceae, consists of 71 genera and 750 mostly tropical and warm species.
Description of the family:
Annual or perennial herbs, sometimes woody at the base or, rarely, small shrubs (Psilotrichum scleranthum). Stipules 0. Leaves simple, alternate or opposite. Inflorescence various, bracteate; bracts hyaline to membranous, straw-coloured to white, subtending one or more flowers. Flowers bisexual or unisexual, mostly actinomorphic with 2 bracteoles, frequently in ultimate small 3-flowered cymes, the lateral flowers often sterile and modified into scales, spines, hooks or hairs. Tepals often green or white or variously coloured, usually 5, arranged in 1 whorl, membranous to firm, finally hardening and often falling with the ripe fruit. Ovary superior, 1-locular. Fruit a capsule, rarely a berry.
Comment:
Amaranthaceae is a family which lacks the usual differentiation into sepals and petals, possessing instead 1 whorl of variously coloured tepals and each flower usually subtended by 1 bract and 2 bracteoles
Worldwide:
71 genera and 750 species, mostly tropical and warm, few temperate.
Zimbabwe:
19 genera and 53 taxa.
- Achyranthes L.
- Achyropsis (Moq.) Hook. f.
- Aerva Forssk.
- Alternanthera Forssk.
- Amaranthus L.
- Celosia L.
- Centemopsis Schinz
- Centrostachys Wall.
- Cyathula Blume
- Gomphrena L.
- Guilleminea Kunth
- Hermbstaedtia Rchb.
- Kyphocarpa (Fenzl ex Endl.) Lopr.
- Leucosphaera Gilg
- Nothosaerva Wight
- Pandiaka (Moq.) Hook. f.
- Psilotrichum Blume
- Pupalia A. Juss.
- Sericorema (Hook. f.) Lopr.
