Chenopodiastrum murale, Linn

George Bentham & Ferdinand Mueller, 1870, Chenopodium & Dysphania, Flora Australiensis, London: L. Reeve & Co., pp. 157-165 : -1

4. C. murale, Linn ., Moq. in DC. Prod. xiii. ii. 00.

A rather stout erect or decumbent much-branched annual, from under 1 ft. to nearly 2 ft. high, usually green, but sometimes with a slight whitish meal on the young shoots. Leaves on long petioles, broadly ovate triangular or rhomboidal, deeply and irregularly toothed, 1 to above 2 in. long. Flowers small, green or slightly mealy, the clusters in much-branched rather slender spikes, forming loose leafless cymes or panicles usually much shorter than or rarely as long as the leaves, almost all axillary, rarely lateral or terminal. Segments of the fruiting perianth broad, concave, somewhat keeled, closing over the fruit or nearly so. Stamens usually 5. Seeds all horizontally flattened, opaque or somewhat rugose, the margins thick and obtuse or thin and acute. Pericarp not readily separable from the seed. - C. crosum, R. Br. Prod. 407; Moq. in DC. Prod. xiii. ii. 68; Hook. f. Fl. Tasm. i. 313.

Queensland. Rockhampton , rare, O'Shanesy.

Victoria. Near Melbourne , Murray river , and Gipps Land , F. Mueller .

Tasmania. Kent's Group , Bass's Straits , R. Brown.

This is another European weed now widely dispersed over various temperate and warin regions of the globe. The Australian specimens I have seen are mostly single ones, and it is therefore probably introduced only. Brown's specimens have the inflorescences more compact, but they are still in young bud and some European ones are precisely similar to them.