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Chenopodium album
Also called Lambsquarters, White Goosefoot, Giant Fat Hen, Common Lambsquarters, Lamb's Quarters, Lambs Quarters, Lambsquarters Goosefoot
Fat-hen is a fast-growing annual weed in the amaranth and beet family, sometimes eaten as a leafy green. It thrives in open, nitrogen-rich soil and is easy to grow from seed, though it is often treated as a weed.
Chenopodium album is a fast-growing annual plant in the flowering plant family Amaranthaceae. Though cultivated in some regions, the plant is elsewhere considered a weed. Common names include lamb's quarters, melde, goosefoot, wild spinach and fat-hen, though several are also applied to other species of the genus Chenopodium, for which reason it is often distinguished as white goosefoot.
Its native range is obscure due to extensive cultivation, but includes most of Europe, from where Carl Linnaeus described the species in 1753. Plants native to eastern Asia are included under C. album, but often differ from European specimens. According to Plants of the World Online, the species' natural distribution includes temperate Eurasia from western Europe to China and the Russian Far East, the Indian subcontinent, North Africa, Ethiopia, and the eastern and central United States.
Pitseed goosefoot · Figleaf goosefoot · Fremont's goosefoot · Tree Spinach · Narrowleaf goosefoot · Pitseed Goosefoot · Canihua · Desert goosefoot · Quinoa · Striped Goosefoot · Stinking goosefoot · Goosefoot
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Chenopodium album 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.
