Amaranthus , a plant of which each flower is composed of several petals shaped like a rose. [1] A pistil emerges from the flower’s centre which grows into a fruit shaped like a round or oval box, divided transversely into two and enclosing seeds which are usually round. Tournefort, Institutiones Rei Herbariae.  [2] See Plant. (I)

Its flowers are bright and diversely-coloured spikes which are coloured purple, gold, red, and yellow. They grow to about two feet and have broad, pointed leaves which are reddish round the edges and pale green at the centre. The seeds, which appear in small capsules at the centre of single flowers only, are round, small, and shiny. Amaranths flower from August to the end of autumn. They need to be watered frequently and grown under glass: they cannot tolerate cold or windy weather.

Amaranths are planted out into flower beds or used to decorate pots filled with rich manure or good earth: without this precaution, they would have difficulty in taking root again.

In winter, the seeds are stored in a box or the stem is kept dry in the greenhouse, which is preferable. After heavy frost, the fruit is seeded for sowing, leaving time for the seeds to ripen. The seeds are sown in April and May. (K)

Notes

1. There are sixty species of Amaranihus, of which the name is derived from the Greek ‘amarantox’ meaning ‘without fading’.

2. Institutiones Rei Herbariae was written by the French naturalist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1656-1708) and published in three volumes in 1700. The work was an enriched translation into Latin of his Eléments de botanique of 1694. It listed 10,000 species and established a new system of classification based primarily on the form of the flowers and fruit (Huxley et al., 1992, i.xlix; Fontenelle, 1708). See also article ‘Greffe’.