CHENOPODIUM murale.
Nettle-leaved Goosefoot.
PENTANDRIA Digynia.
G en. Char. Cal. 5-fcleft, inferior. Cor. none. Seed 1,
lenticular, invested with the closed five-sided calyx.
Spec. Char. Leaves ovate, acute, toothed, shining.
Clusters very much branched, cymose, leafless.
Syn. Chenopodium murale. Linn. Sp. PI. 3 18. Sm.
FI. Brit. 2 7 4 . Huds. 105. With. 272. Hull. 56.
Relh. 100. Sibth. 88. Abbot. 54r. Curt. Land,
fasc. 6. t. 20.
Blitum Pes anserinus dictum, acutiore folio. Rail
Syn. 154.
V E R Y abundant on banks and under walls about towns and
villages in the autumn, flowering in August and September,
and ripening abundance of seed in the following months. The
whole plant is fetid, known by its branched spreading stem,
its dark shining leaves, which are ovate and sharply toothed,
but especially by its cymose and very compound clusters or
panicles, destitute of small leaves, springing from the stem a
little above the insertion of each footstalk, being therefore not
truly axillary. The clusters are most crowded about the
summit of the stem, and one of them is terminal. The root
is annual. Calyx more or less frosted or glandular. Seed
larger than in C. rubrum, black, very minutely dotted. The
stem is often tinged with dark purple rather than red.
The seeds of the various species of Chenopodium afford a large
supply of food to small birds.