Amaranthus tricolor

Annual herbaceous plant, 30Ð60(Ð125) cm in height. Erect or ascending, stems stout, much branched, angular, glabrous. Leaves arranged spirally, simple, broadly ovate, elliptic to lanceolate, petiolate, 4Ð10 cm long, shortly cuneate to attenuate at the base, emarginate to obtuse or acute at apex. Leaf colour dark green, light green or red. Terminal leaves may be red, purple, yellow or variegated. Inflorescences borne terminal and axillary, globose cluster up to 2.5 cm in diameter, upper clusters form a terminal spike, male and female flowers intermixed. Flowers unisexual, subsessile with three tepals 5 mm long, with long awn. Male flowers have three stamens, female flowers have superior single celled ovary with three stigmas. Fruit ovoid-urceolate capsule, circumsessile below the middle, 3 mm long with single seed. Seeds ovoid, brown or black, smooth or faintly reticulate, lenticular in shape, 1Ð1.5 mm long (Grubben, 2004;Rahman and Gulshana, 2014;Ecocrop, 2018).