Amaranth's name means unfading, and its h is a spelling mistake
Amaranth plants can tower 2.5 metres, glow maroon to crimson and yield thousands of tiny seeds per gram. The Greek name meant unfading. The h in the Latin spelling crept in through a false link with the Greek word for flower, and Europeans first gave the name to a different genus altogether.
Amaranthus is a genus of about 75 species, some annual, some perennial, spread through the tropics on six continents; certain kinds go by the unflattering name pigweed. Plants stand 1 to 2.5 metres tall on hollow, grooved, succulent stems, with oval leaves roughly 6.5 to 15 cm long. In summer or autumn they send up dense, catkin-like flower clusters in large panicles, and the foliage and stems can blaze in deep reds. Their photosynthesis runs on the efficient C4 pathway.
Reproduction varies by species: A. hybridus bears male and female flowers on one plant, while A. palmeri separates them onto different plants. Seeds are round, 1 to 1.5 mm across and shiny, released when the lid of a small capsule pops off. Growers harvest the panicle about 200 days after planting, at roughly 1,000 to 3,000 seeds per gram. People raise amaranth as a leafy vegetable, as a grain-like pseudocereal and as an ornamental.
Botanists find the genus difficult. Species look alike and hybridise freely, so counts are uncertain. Sauer in 1955 split it simply by whether flowers of both sexes share a plant, and Mosyakin and Robertson in 1996 proposed three subgenera, Acnida, Amaranthus and Albersia. Genetic studies point to A. hypochondriacus as ancestor of the cultivated grains, with evidence of separate domestications in South and Central America.
The Greek amarantos combines a prefix meaning without with a verb meaning to wither or consume, and Dioscorides mentions the plant. In Europe the label first went to Celosia, since true amaranths were unknown there and both genera have long-lasting dried flowers. The peoples of the Americas, who grew it since ancient times, had their own names: huauhtli in Nahuatl, kiwicha in Quechua, xtes in Maya.
Source: Amaranth
