Chenopodium album L.   Chenopodiaceae (Goosefoot Family)   Europe   White Pigweed   Lamb's Quarters    Mealweed

                                          July Photo

Plant Characteristics:  Erect annual, pale green, red-veined, 2-20 dm. high, branching, farinose; lvs. glaucous, farinose beneath, rhombic-ovate or the upper lanceolate, +/- sinuate-dentate or serrate, 1-5 cm. long, attenuate at base; petioles slender, ca. half as long; fl.-glomerules thick, in rather dense heavy spikes in upper axils, forming panicles; calyx 5- parted, farinose, keeled, enclosing the fr.; pericarp adherent; seed horizontal, black, nearly smooth, shining, ca. 1.3 mm. broad, with a characteristic marginal notch, and definite groove inward from notch to center of each face.

Habitat:  Common weed in waste and fallow places below 6000 ft.; widely distributed over N. America.  Variable bloom period.

Name:  Chenopodium is from two Greek words meaning "goose" and "foot" which refers to the shape of the leaves in some species.  (Dale 96).  Album means white.  (Dale 115).

General:  Common in the study area.   Photographed on the westerly side of the Delhi Ditch and on the flats near the terminus of Back Bay Dr. with Eastbluff Dr. (my comments).      Long used as a wild green both raw and cooked.  Once very popular in Europe till spinach came into being.  Numerous Southwest Indian tribes used the leaves in soups, stews and salads; they also gathered the black seeds for baking.  The flavor is not unlike buckwheat.  Many species are boiled and applied as a poultice to reduce swelling.  (Clarke 198).      C. album has been known to accumulate free nitrates in quantities capable of causing death or distress in cattle.  (Fuller 385).      It is possible to bake a palatable bread using the seeds of mealweed.  Occasionally, during politically stressful moments, Napoleon I himself had to live on chenopodium bread.  American Indians used it for bread and gruel.  The seeds may not only be mixed with wheat and baked into bread, but may also be boiled and eaten or toasted as tortillas.  Proof of its ancient popularity has been found in long dead completely preserved human stomachs.  During the third to fifth centuries A.D., it was not uncommon among some northern European peoples to bury their dead in peat bogs whose high acidity preserved the remains.  (Crockett 222).       Laboratory tests have revealed that C. album, contains more iron, protein, vitamin B1 and B2 than raw cabbage or spinach.  The plant is found in North America, the British Isles, Continental Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia.  Only in South America does it deny the favor of its presence.  At one time lamb's quarters was the most valued vegetable in man's diet.  And any surplus of the plant was used as cattle fodder.  Lamb's quarters lost favor only after its relative, the upstart, spinach, was introduced from southwest Asia in the sixteenth century.  But it left its name in a number of places.  It was the "melde" of the Anglo-Saxons (from the Old Norse meldr, the Vikings' word for a certain quantity of ground meal-and referring the texture of the underside of the leaves).  As "melde,"  it grew so profusely in some areas that the settlements of these early Britons were named after it.  For instance, the tenth-century hamlet Meldeburna (meaning "the stream where melde grows") in Cambridgeshire survives today as the town of Melbourn.  And there was Meldings in Suffolk, now Milden.  (Hatfield 106-107).       Often confused with C. berlandieri.  (Hickman, Ed. 508).

Text Ref:  Hickman, Ed. 508; Munz, Calif. Flora 372; Munz, Flora So. Calif. 360; Robbins et al. 148; Roberts 19.

Photo Ref:  May 1 83 # 5,6; Oct-Nov 83 # 11,12; April-May 84 # 12,13.

Identity: by R. De Ruff, confirmed by F. Roberts.

Computer Ref:  Plant Data 222.

Have plant specimen.

Last edit 11/24/02.

                                            July Photo