Chenopodium album

Lamb's quarters

Family: Chenopodiaceae · Type: annual · Not Native

Lamb's quarters is a naturalized annual herb found throughout California in disturbed areas and fields at elevations below 1,800 meters. Flowering from June to October, this plant produces tiny greenish-white flowers in axillary and terminal branched spikes. Growing with many-branched stems 18 to 100 centimeters tall, it has an upright and spreading growth habit. Its leaves are distinctively ovate to diamond-shaped, 15 to 70 millimeters long, with irregular teeth and a dull green surface that becomes powdery white underneath. The fruit is small, approximately 1 to 1.5 millimeters in diameter, with a wall that becomes free as the plant matures.

Habitat: Common. Disturbed areas, fields

Bloom period: Jun-Oct

Elevation: < 1800 m

Bioregions: CA

California counties: Santa Barbara, Kern, San Diego, Imperial, Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, Inyo, Mariposa, San Luis Obispo, San Joaquin, San Francisco, Riverside, Santa Clara, Ventura, Lake, Solano, Colusa, Napa, Plumas, Yolo, Alpine, Modoc, Monterey, Sacramento, Butte, Contra Costa, Fresno, Mono, Madera, Sonoma, Kings, Sutter, Tehama, Glenn, Lassen, Nevada, Siskiyou, Shasta, Yuba, Trinity, Tulare, Alameda, Stanislaus, Mendocino, Sierra, Humboldt, Placer, Del Norte, Tuolumne, San Mateo, Merced, El Dorado, Santa Cruz

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