AMARANTH or AMARANT, a name chiefly used in poetry, and applied to certain plants which, from not soon fading, typified immortality (from the Gr. aµapavros, unwithering).
The plant genus Amarantus (of the family Amarantacea) con tains several well-known garden plants, such as love-lies-bleed ing (A. caudatus), a native of India, a vigorous hardy annual, with dark purplish flowers crowded in handsome drooping spikes. Another species, A. hypochondriacus, is prince's feather, another Indian annual, with deeply-veined lance-shaped leaves, purple on the under face, and deep crimson flowers densely packed on erect spikes. "Globe amaranth" belongs to an allied genus, Gomphrena, and is also a native of India. It is an annual about i8in. high, with solitary round heads of flowers; the heads are violet from the colour of the bracts which surround the small flowers.
In North America upwards of 3o species of amaranth occur, chiefly in the southern and southwestern United States, several of which are introduced weeds, mostly from tropical America. Among the most widely distributed are the green amaranth or rough pigweed (A. retroflexus), the red amaranth or pilewort (A. hybridus), the spiny amaranth (A. spinosus), the prostrate ama ranth (A. blitoides) and the tumble-weed (A. graecizans), found almost throughout the continent except the far north.
In ancient Greece the amaranth (also called Xpvaav9Eµov and EXiXpvaorl) was sacred to Ephesian Artemis. It was supposed to have special healing properties, and as a symbol of immor tality was used to decorate images of the gods and tombs. In legend, Amarynthus (a form of Amarantus) was a hunter of Artemis and king of Euboea; in a village of Amarynthus, of which he was the eponymous hero, there was a famous temple of Artemis Amarynthia or Amarysia (Strabo x. 448; Pausan. i. p-5)• See Lenz, Botanik der alt. Griech. and Rom. (1859) ; J. Murr, Die Pfianzenwelt in der griech. Mythol. (189o).