CHENOPO'DIUM, a genus of plants the typo of the natural order Chenopodiacmr. It consists of weedy plants, common on dunghills and in waste places, and known by the strange names of Fat lien (C. album), Good King Henry (C. Bonua-llenricua), lee. They are generally Insipid plants, whose leaves and young shoots maybe eaten an spinach, but which have no particular merit. In this genus is however found the celebrated Quinoa of Peru (C. Quinoa). This plant, whose 'feeds are said to be of as much importance to the Peruvians as the maize, potato, and wheat, is an annual weedy species, with an appearance similar to that of Garden Orach, to the size of which it grows. Its flowers appear in close clusters about tho ends of the branches, and a, angle of the petiole, showing the peduncle ; b, flower; e, flower deprived of its calyx, showing the ovary, surmounted by three pistils; d, calyx; e, fruit Imbedded in the succulent calyx ; J, sr, fruit separated from the calyx ; A, hori. zontal section of fruit ; i, vertical do.; k, embryo. AU these figures, excepting a, magnified in various degrees.
are succeeded by a profusion of little black or white Reeds (according to tho variety) about the size of grains of millet. Its leaves are employed as spinach, and the seeds in soup or broth as rice, and in some parts of South America they are in as much use as rice in India. They are said to yield a pleasant beer when fermented. It is chiefly upon the highest land of Southern Peru, where neither barley nor rye will ripen, as, for instance, at the height of nearly 13,000 feet on the table-land of Chiquitha, that Quinoa forms the great article of agri culture ; it there forms fields, the limits of which the eye can hardly reach, of a monotonous and unpleasant aspect, scarcely mixed with a single other species, and very unlike the rich and waving greenness of our standing corn. it is also extremely common about the great lake
of Titicaca.. The seeds are ripened in England, and may now be purchased at any of the seed-shops ; but the plant can hardly be con sidered worth the attempt at cultivating it where anything else will grow. C. olidum has an atrocious odour, and has a reputation as au antispasmodio and emmenagogue.
The following is an analysis of the British species of Chenopodium.
• Perianth enveloping the fruit.
+ Leaves undivided.
Leaves ovate rhomboidal. C. olidum.
Leaves ovate-elliptical. C. poippermum.
ft Leaves toothed, angled, or lobed. Leaves triangular. C. urbicum. Leaven sinuate-deutate. C. album. Leaves unequally 3-lobed. C. ficifolium. Leaven rhomboid-ovate. C sea rale. Leaves subcordate. C. hybridum.
•• Perianth not covering the fruit.
t Stigmas abort.
Leaves rhomboid. C. ruhrum. Leaves triangular. C. bet ryoidea. Leaves oblong. C. glaucum.
Stigmas elongated.
Leaves triangular. C. Benus-//enriew.