Scientific Name
Other Names
Life Form
Family
Food - Eaten as a vegetable, either steamed in entirety, or the leaves cooked like spinach as a leaf vegetable. It is also a very good feed (both the leaves and the seeds) for chickens (hens) and other poultry. Medicine - The leaves are anthelmintic, antiphlogistic, antirheumatic, mildly laxative, odontalgic.
Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Nepal, Pakistan
Thrives in disturbed areas, wastelands, and cultivated fields, found in nitrogen-rich soils.
It is fast-growing upright annual herb often becoming prostrate after flowering reaching 30-80 cm tall.
Stem is erect, branched, often reddish-tinged.
Leaves are variable in shape, lower leaves diamond-shaped, toothed, 3-7 cm long, upper leaves lanceolate, entire, 1-5 cm long, often with a white powdery coating.
Flowers are tiny, radially symmetrical and grow in small clusters on a dense branched inflorescence, 10-40 cm long.
Fruit is tiny, black seeds produced in large quantities.
Flowering and Fruiting: May-October.