A perennial herb, glandular-pubescent, strong-scented, prostrate, and diffusely branched, with narrow small short-petioled deeply pinnatifid leaves. Flowers small, green, perfect, or pistillate, solitary, or in small axillary clusters. Calyx urn-shaped, 3-5-toothed, inarrowed at the throat, in fruit becoming obovoid, strongly reticulated and closed. Stamens 5. Styles 3, exserted. Wall of the pericarp thin, glandular. Seed vertical. Embryo a complete ring in the mealy endosperm. [Name in honor of G. J. Roubieu, French botanist]

A monotypic genus of South America, often included in Chenopodium.

I. Roubieva Multifida (L.) Moq. Cut-Leaved Goosefoot

Fig. 1692

Chenopodium multifidum L. Sp. Pl. 220. 1753.

Roubieva multifida Moq. Ann. Sci. Nat. (II.) 1: 293. pl. 10. 1834.

Usually much branched, very leafy, prostrate, or the branches ascending, 6'-18' long. Leaves lanceolate or linear-lanceolate or linear-oblong in outline, 1/2'-1 1/2' long, 1 1/2"-4" wide, deeply pinnatifid into linear-oblong acute entire or toothed lobes; flowers 1-5 together in the axils, sessile, less than 1/2" broad, some perfect, some pistillate; fruiting calyx obovoid, obtuse, 3-nerved and strongly reticulate-veined, 1/2" thick; utricle compressed.

In waste places and ballast, southern New York to Virginia. Naturalized or adventive from tropical America. June-Sept.