Amaranthus retroflexus

Redroot pigweed, Redroot Pigweed

Family: Amaranthaceae · Type: perennial · Not Native

Redroot pigweed is a naturalized annual found in agricultural fields and disturbed areas across the North Coast, North Coast Interior, Central Valley, Central Western, Southwestern, and Southeastern desert regions of California at elevations up to 2,400 meters. Flowering from June to November, this plant produces small green flowers in dense, erect, panicle-like clusters that can be green or silver-green in color. Growing with robust erect stems 15 to 150 centimeters tall, the plant can be either green or reddish and is densely to moderately woolly in texture. Its leaves are broadly ovate to rhombic-ovate, 20 to 150 millimeters long with wedge-shaped bases and obtuse to acute tips, attached to petioles 25 to 80 millimeters long. The fruit is a small circumscissile capsule 1.7 to 2.5 millimeters long, containing dark brown to black shiny seeds.

Habitat: Agricultural fields, disturbed areas

Bloom period: Jun-Nov

Elevation: < 2400 m

Bioregions: NCo, NCoRI, GV, CW, SW, SNE

California counties: Santa Clara, San Joaquin, Stanislaus, Riverside, Orange, Los Angeles, San Bernardino, San Luis Obispo, Fresno, Kern, San Diego, Santa Barbara, Ventura, Mendocino, Lake, Contra Costa, Sonoma, Amador, Butte, Santa Cruz, San Francisco, Alpine, Madera, Yolo, Sutter, Mono, Modoc, Sacramento, San Benito, San Mateo, Yuba, Napa, Humboldt, Alameda, Tulare, Inyo, Solano, Marin, Plumas, Sierra, Calaveras, Merced, Monterey, Imperial

Data from The California Species Project — 14,000+ California species with verified data from CNPS, CDFW, USFWS, Jepson eFlora, Cal-IPC, and more.