White foxtail

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White foxtail
Amaranthus albus sl14.jpg

White foxtail ( Amaranthus albus )

Systematics
Nuclear eudicotyledons
Order : Clove-like (Caryophyllales)
Family : Foxtail family (Amaranthaceae)
Subfamily : Amaranthoideae
Genre : Amaranth ( Amaranthus )
Type : White foxtail
Scientific name
Amaranthus albus
L.

The white foxtail ( Amaranthus albus ), or white amaranth called, is a type of plant from the genus Amaranthus ( Amaranthus ) within the family of the foxtail plants (Amaranthaceae). It originally comes from the central USA and large areas of North America and Mexico are considered its home, in South America , Eurasia , Africa and Australia it is a neophyte .

description

illustration
inflorescence
Habitus
With fruit stands
Inflorescence or fruit cluster
The fruits open with a circular transverse crack.
Seeds

Appearance and leaf

The white foxtail is a deciduous, annual herbaceous plant and usually reaches heights of 10 to 70, sometimes up to 100 centimeters. A tap root is formed. The aboveground parts of the plant can be hairy or balding to sticky and downy. Its mostly upright, sometimes ascending to seldom prostrate, heavily branched stem is largely bald and more or less densely hairy in the upper area, more or less green and white when dried. Large specimens are steppe runners .

The alternate arranged on the stem leaves are divided into petiole and leaf blade. The petiole of the stem leaves is about half as long as the leaf blade or about as long as the young lateral leaves with a length of 5 to 40 mm. Their simple leaf blade is 4 to 8 centimeters long and 1.5 to 3 centimeters wide, elliptical to obovate or oblong-spatulate with a stem-encompassing, narrow-wedge-shaped blade base and a pointed to dull or rounded and whitish to yellowish awning upper The End. The leaf margin is flat to more or less wavy, smooth and sometimes it is cartilaginous and white. The stem leaves are obsolete and new leaves develop in their axils. These lateral leaves have a 7 to 20 mm long and 3 to 10 mm wide leaf blade. Sometimes the mostly light green leaves are yellowish or reddish in color.

Inflorescence and flower

The flowering period extends from July to October in Central Europe and from June to October in California. The white foxtail is single sexed ( monoecious ). The green, slightly green or yellowish flower clusters are axillary. Female and male flowers are mixed up in the flower ball. The three bracts below each flower are 1.5 to 4 mm long and one and a half to twice as long as the flower envelope and lanceolate-linear to awl-shaped with a more or less spiky, piercing upper end.

The inconspicuous, unisexual flowers are threefold and green. Each flower contains only three green to brown, free bracts , which are significantly shorter than the bracts. Male flowers contain three free, fertile stamens . Female flowers contain three more or less identical, with a length of usually 1 to 1.5 (0.7 to 2) mm, lanceolate-elongated to linear, or narrow-egg-shaped free, thin bracts with a pointed upper end and three durable, sessile , upright, slender, papillary scars . The egg-shaped, uni-, Upper permanent ovary contains only an upright ovule .

Fruit and seeds

The durable, ellipsoidal-egg-shaped bloom envelops the fruit and is green-white to brown when the fruit is ripe and smooth in the lower area, further up, especially near the upper end, wrinkled and bumpy. The fruit is ellipsoidal ovoid with a length of 1.5 to 2 mm. The fruit shell tears open at about half the height across with a smooth edge (circumscissil). Each fruit contains only one seed. The seeds are lenticular with a length of 0.8 to 1.1 mm. The seed coat is shiny reddish-brown to black and smooth.

Chromosome set

The basic chromosome number is x = 16; there is diploidy , i.e. 2n = 32.

Confusion with other species

Amaranthus albus and Amaranthus blitoides are particularly confused with herbarium material . Both types are easy to distinguish by the size and luster of their seeds.

ecology

The white foxtail is a therophyte . One specimen develops up to about 100,000 seeds.

The flowers are protogynous, which means that at first the female flower organs are capable of pollination and later the male flower organs scatter their pollen, but there is an overlap. This basically promotes cross-pollination, but this species mostly self-pollinates . There is self- compatibility. Pollination is rarely done by the wind.

Usually the seeds are the diaspores . Large specimens are steppe runners, also called steppe rollers ; in winter the whole plant tears off above the ground and is transported further by the wind, the seeds are released and spread over large areas.

The wind-pollinated flowers are not visited by many insects. Different types of insects eat the leaves of Amaranthus species, for example the beetle Disonycha triangularis , the caterpillars of Pholisora ​​catullus and some moth species. The seeds of Amaranthus species are eaten by some bird species, mainly those that look for food in open areas at the bottom, especially in autumn and winter.

Occurrence

The natural range of the white foxtail are the central USA . It has been naturalized in large parts of North America and Mexico for a long time . In South America , Eurasia , Africa and Australia ( New South Wales , Victoria and South Australia ) it is a neophyte .

Habitat

The white foxtail mostly belongs to the ruderal vegetation . In the climate-favored areas of Central Europe it inhabits open sandy areas near localities, it grows on paths, on garbage dumps or on old compost deposits, but also on railway gravel. It is said to have been brought to Central Europe with grain from its North American homeland; this is indicated by its occurrence in the vicinity of loading facilities, in ports and at freight yards. He first performed in Tuscany in 1723 . In Germany the white foxtail has been naturalized since 1880. In Austria , these new citizens in the Pannonian area are moderately frequent, otherwise scattered and absent in Salzburg. In North America, the white foxtail thrives on disturbed locations, fallow land , railway embankments, on river banks, sandy locations, roadsides and on fields at altitudes between 0 and 2200 meters.

In Central Europe, the white foxtail thrives in "annual ruderal societies", class Sisymbrietea officinalis, for example crops (without meadows, pastures, forests), arable weeds (often short-lived due to crop rotation, interpenetrating), violenea arvensis, or herbaceous fields, borders, perennial heaps outside the floodplains, short-lived ruderal corridors, salt herb corridors on urban-industrial special locations Association Salsolion, or river and stream floodplains in lower elevations, annual vegetation on dry river banks Association Bidentetea tripartiti, it also occurs in the Association Eragrostion. The white foxtail is a characteristic of the class Chenopodietea Br.-Bl. 1951.

The white foxtail needs loose, somewhat loamy or sandy, nutrient-rich and above all nitrate-rich soils that should be fairly dry and that have to warm up a lot in summer. Pointer values ​​according to Ellenberg are: Light index: 8 = half-light to full-light plant, temperature index: 8 = warmth to extreme heat index, continental index: 6 = shows moderate steppe climate, humidity index: 2 = extreme dryness to dryness index, humidity change: showing no change in humidity, reaction number: indifferent, nitrogen number: 7 = showing nitrogen abundance, salt number: 1 = salt bearing, but mostly showing no or low salt content, heavy metal resistance: not heavy metal resistant. Pointer values ​​for the influence of civilization are according to Kunick 1974 and Frank & Klotz 1988: human influence (hemerobia): 6 = polyhemerobic = very strong human influence, attachment to cities (urbanity): urbanophile = attached to cities.

Systematics

Amaranthus albus was first published in 1759 by Carl von Linné in Systema Naturae , Editio Decima, 2, p. 1268. Homonyms for Amaranthus albus L. are Amaranthus albus Thunb. (published in Flora Capensis , 2nd edition, 1823, p. 215) and Amaranthus albus Rodschied ex F. Dietr. (published in Complete Lexicon of Horticulture and Botany , 2nd Edition, 1, 1824, p. 196). Synonyms for Amaranthus albus L. are: Amaranthus albus var. Pubescens (Uline & WLBray) Fernald , Amaranthus gracilentus H.W.Kung , Amaranthus pubescens (Uline & WLBray) Rydb. The specific epithet albus means white.

Amaranthus albus belongs to the subgenus Albersia from the genus Amaranthus within the family Amaranthaceae .

use

The leaves and young above-ground plant parts of Amaranthus albus taste mild when cooked. They are rich in vitamins and minerals and are eaten like spinach. The seeds are eaten raw or cooked. The seeds are ground into flour and bread is baked from them. These fiddly small seeds with a diameter of about 1 mm are very rich in nutrients. If you cook the seeds whole they become gelatinous, but all the small seeds are difficult to chew in the mouth and so they pass through the digestive system undigested (fiber).

You can color yellow and green with the plant parts of Amaranthus albus .

Common names

Common names are other languages: in French Amarante blanche and Italian Amaranto bianco.

Trivia

The descendant Tumbleweed from the openSUSE distribution was named after the white foxtail.

swell

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Amaranthus albus in the Germplasm Resources Information Network (GRIN), USDA , ARS , National Genetic Resources Program. National Germplasm Resources Laboratory, Beltsville, Maryland. Retrieved January 21, 2014.
  2. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m White Amaranth ( Amaranthus albus ). In: FloraWeb.de.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Sergei L. Mosyakin & Kenneth R. Robertson: Amaranthus : Amaranthus albus , p. 413 - same text online as the printed work , In: Flora of North America Editorial Committee (ed.) : Flora of North America North of Mexico , Volume 4 - Magnoliophyta: Caryophyllidae, part 1. Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 2003. ISBN 0-19-517389-9
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g data sheet at BiolFlor .
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g h i data sheet with photo at Illinois Wildflowers .
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Mihai Costea, 2012: data sheet at Jepson eFlora .
  7. ↑ a b data sheet at InfoFlora, the internet portal of the national data and information center on Swiss flora .
  8. ↑ a b c data sheet with photos at Botanik im Bild / Flora von Österreich , 2004.
  9. ↑ a b data sheet with photos at Go Botany - New England Wild .
  10. ↑ a b c weeds data sheet with photos ( memento from February 12, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) at the Austrian Agency for Health and Food Safety GmbH = AGES.
  11. ↑ Datasheet at New South Wales Flora Online .
  12. ↑ First publication scanned at biodiversitylibrary.org .
  13. ↑ Amaranthus albus at Tropicos.org. Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, accessed January 18, 2014.
  14. ↑ a b Amaranthus albus at Plants For A Future . Retrieved January 31, 2014.

literature

  • Otto Schmeil , Jost Fitschen (greeting), Siegmund Seybold: The flora of Germany and the neighboring countries. A book for identifying all wild and frequently cultivated vascular plants. 95th completely revised u. exp. Edition. Quelle & Meyer, Wiebelsheim 2011, ISBN 978-3-494-01498-2 .
  • Henning Haeupler , Thomas Muer: picture atlas of the fern and flowering plants of Germany (= the fern and flowering plants of Germany. Volume 2). 2nd, corrected and enlarged edition. Published by the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation. Ulmer, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-8001-4990-2 .
  • Oskar Sebald, Siegmund Seybold, Georg Philippi (Hrsg.): The fern and flowering plants of Baden-Württemberg. Volume 1: General Part, Special Part (Pteridophyta, Spermatophyta): Lycopodiaceae to Plumbaginaceae. 2nd, supplemented edition. Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-8001-3322-9 .
  • Dietmar Aichele, Heinz-Werner Schwegler: The flowering plants of Central Europe. Volume 2: Yew plants to butterfly plants. Franckh-Kosmos, Stuttgart 1994, ISBN 3-440-06192-2 .

Web links

Commons : White foxtail ( Amaranthus albus )  - Collection of images, videos and audio files