Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Amaranth
AMARANTHACEAE
In this family,
Amaranthus
is the genus that is most important to gardeners. Grain amaranth,
leaf amaranth, and ornamental amaranths are found within it; there are dozens of species of
amaranths from all over the world. Amaranth seeds and leaves have been used for over
5,000 years. Grain amaranth is considered a pseudocereal because botanically speaking it is
not a cereal grain but is used like one and has similar nutritional properties. It was grown by
the Incas, Aztecs, and many other peoples of Central and South America until, with the
Spanish conquest, it, like so many other indigenous crops, all but disappeared. Lately there
has been a renaissance of grain amaranth in the USA and in Europe, thanks to the “discov-
ery” of its high protein content and favorable configuration of amino acids. Leaf amaranth
is, by contrast, an important vegetable crop in southeast Asia.
Amaranth, terminal flower head
BOTANICAL CHARACTERISTICS
Most members of the amaranth family are herbaceous annuals or
perennials. Leaves are simple, alternate and opposite. Amaranths mostly develop terminal, branching,
clumping blossoms. The German name for the family, “foxtail,” comes from the long, bushy, bent
flower heads that do indeed look like the tail of a fox. Plants are monoecious, with inconspicuous
flowers. Male flowers are at the base of the flower head, female at the tip. Whereas cultivated varieties
of cereal grains have been selected for ever larger seeds, cultivars of amaranth have come to be
through selecting for higher numbers of the small seeds they produce.
AMARANTH
Amaranthus
spp.
