It’s easy to dismiss as just another green weed, but
Pigweed is a close cousin of the cultivated amaranths,
of which various varieties are grown both for their
seeds (from which a flour can be made) and their
beauty. If its flowers were any other color, Pigweed
might join the ranks of the ornamental amaranths.
Here, against a backdrop of dark green English ivy by
a sidewalk in Beechview, we can appreciate the elegant
architecture of Pigweed, and pause to admire it before
we go back to ignoring it as usual.
Gray describes the genus and the species:
AMARANTHUS [Tourn.] L. AMARANTH. Flowers 3-bracted.
Calyx glabrous. Stamens 5, rarely 2 or 3, separate;
anthers 2-celled. Stigmas 2 or 3. Fruit an ovoid
1-seeded utricle, 2-3-beaked at the apex, mostly
longer than the calyx, opening transversely or
sometimes bursting irregularly. Embryo coiled into a
ring around theS albumen. Coarse annual weeds, with
alternate and entire petioled setosely tipped leaves,
and small green or purplish flowers in axillary or
terminal spiked clusters; in late summer and autumn. (Amarantos,
unfading, because the dry calyx and bracts do not
wither.)
A. RETROFLEXUS L. (GREEN A., PIGWEED.) Roughish and
more or less pubescent; leaves dull green,
long-petioled, ovate or rhombic-ovate, undulate; the
thick spikes crowded in a stiff glomerate panicle;
bracts awn-pointed, rigid, exceeding the acute or
obtuse sepals. Cultivated grounds, common; indigenous
southwestw. (Adv. from Trop. Am.)