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Food- Consumed as cooked, steames , or fried vegetable. Leaves also used to prepare smoothies. Medicine- Traditionally the leaves, seeds, roots and entire plant is used in the treatment of many diseases including diuretic, analgesic, antipyretic, vermifuge, antiulcer antidiabetic, anti-cholesterolemic, laxative, asthma and veneral diseases.
Mexico to America
Thrives in fields, waste places, widely naturalized in the Tropical World.
It is annual herb.
Stem is erect or occasionally ascending, 10-80 cm long. Stems are sparingly to densely branched, channeled.
Leaves are triangular-ovate to narrowly rhombic, 2-7 cm long, 1.5-5.5 cm wide, hairless, tip usually narrow and with a small narrow notch, stalks 1-10 cm long.
Flowers are green, in slender, paniculate spikes, in leaf axils or at the end of branches. Both sexes are mixed, but female flowers are more numerous.
Fruit is nearly round, 0.13-0.15 cm, not or only slightly exceeding the sepals.
Flowering: June – August,
Fruiting: August – October.