The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Amaranthus retroflexus
Also called Common Amaranth, Common Tumble Weed, Red Rooted Pigweed, Red-root Amaranth, Redroot Pigweed, Rough pigweed, Green amaranth
Redroot amaranth is an annual weed that forms a bushy, tumbleweed-like plant up to about 1 m tall, native to the Americas and now widespread worldwide. It grows quickly from seed in open, disturbed soil and is usually treated as a weed rather than a garden plant.
Amaranthus retroflexus is a species of flowering plant in the family Amaranthaceae with several common names, including red-root amaranth, redroot pigweed, red-rooted pigweed, common amaranth, pigweed amaranth, and common tumbleweed.
Outside of its native range, it is considered a weed. Leaves, stems and seeds may be eaten raw and cooked, the leaves have a high nutritional value.
No species of genus Amaranthus is known to be poisonous to humans, but the leaves of A. retroflexus contain oxalic acid and may contain nitrates if grown in nitrate-rich soils.
Like many other species of Amaranthus, this plant may be harmful and even deadly when fed to cattle and pigs in large amounts over several days. Such forage may cause fatal nephrotoxicity, presumably because of its high oxalate content. Other symptoms, such as bloat or methemoglobinemia in the most severe cases, might reflect its high nitrate content.
It may be native to the Neotropics or Central and Eastern North America, but is widespread as an introduced species on most continents in a great number of habitats.
Greenstripe · Prostrate pigweed · Mat amaranth · Purple amaranth · Brown's amaranth · Love-lies-bleeding · Red amaranth · Spleen amaranth · Mediterranean amaranth · Slim amaranth · Prince-of-Wales feather · African amaranth
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Amaranthus retroflexus by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
