Characters nearly as in Cycloloma, but the seed-coat membranaceous and the albumen wanting.—Annuals or suffruticose perennials, with flat or more usually linear and terete leaves. (Named for W. D. J. Koch, a German botanist.)
K. scopària, Schrad. Annual, erect, puberulent or glabrate, branching; leaves narrowly lanceolate to linear; flowers in small axillary clusters, sessile, each sepal developing a thick wing.—Sparingly introduced; Vt., Ont., and Ill. (Nat. from Eu.)
3. CHENOPÒDIUM, Tourn. Goosefoot. Pigweed.
Flowers perfect, all bractless. Calyx 5- (rarely 4-) parted or lobed, unchanged in fruit or becoming succulent and berry-like, more or less enveloping the depressed fruit. Stamens mostly 5; filaments filiform. Styles 2, rarely 3. Seed horizontal or vertical, lenticular; the coat crustaceous; embryo coiled partly or fully round the mealy albumen.—Weeds, usually with a white mealiness, or glandular. Flowers sessile in small clusters collected in spiked panicles. (Named from χήν, a goose, and ποῦς, foot, in allusion to the shape of the leaves.)—Our species are mostly annuals, flowering through late summer and autumn, growing around dwellings, in manured soil, cultivated grounds, and waste places.
§ 1. Annual, more or less mealy, not glandular nor aromatic; fruiting calyx dry; seed horizontal; embryo a complete ring.
[*] Pericarp very easily separated from the seed; leaves entire or rarely sinuate-dentate.
1. C. Bosciànum, Moq. Erect, slender (2° high), loosely branched, often nearly glabrous; leaves oblong- to linear-lanceolate (1–2´ long), attenuate into a slender petiole, acute, the lower sinuate-dentate or often all entire; flowers small, solitary or in small clusters upon the slender branchlets; calyx not strongly carinate. (C. album, var. Boscianum, Gray, Manual.)—N. Y. to Minn., south to N. C. and Tex.
2. C. leptophỳllum, Nutt. Densely mealy or rarely nearly glabrous (½–1½° high), simple or branched, often strict; leaves linear (½–1´ long), entire, rather shortly petioled; flowers closely clustered, in dense or interrupted spikelets; calyx-lobes strongly carinate.—Sea-coast, Conn. to N. J., north shore of L. Erie, and from Dak. to Col., N. Mex., and westward.
[*][*] Pericarp persistent upon the smooth seed; leaves more or less sinuate-dentate (except in C. polyspermum).
C. polyspérmum, L. Low, often spreading, green and wholly destitute of mealiness; leaves all entire, oblong or ovate and on slender petioles; flowers very small, in slender panicles in all the axils, the thin lobes of the calyx very incompletely enclosing the fruit; seed obtuse-edged.—Sparingly naturalized in the Eastern States. (Adv. from Eu.)