This section is from the book "Harper's Guide To Wild Flowers", by Caroline A. Creevey. Also available from Amazon: Harper's Guide To Wild Flowers.
Family, Buckwheat. Flowers, dioecious (pistils and stamens in different flowers). No corolla. Sepals, green at first, later with the loose achenes, the whole panicle of flowers, including upper stem and leaves, becomes a ruddy color. Leaves, halberd-shaped (eared at base), mostly clustered at root, but some smaller on stem. Upper leaves clasp the stem with thin, silvery, membranous, stipular sheaths.
Low, sour-tasting herbs, growing from somewhat woody, creeping rootstocks, spreading fast in cultivated ground, often becoming a troublesome weed. So common everywhere as to redden the fields where they grow.
 
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