Weeds
Chenopodium glaucum L. - Oakleaved Goosefoot.
Systematic position.
Family Chenopodiaceae, Genus Chenopodium L.Biological group.
Spring annual weed.Morphology and biology.
Polymorphic species. Plant is 5-75 cm in height, with ascending, prostrate, or rarer straight stem. Leaves are alternate, petiolate, oblong, rarer linear, cuneate at base, mostly repand-serrate, rarer smooth-edged, glabrous, dark-green from above, farinose from below, with protruded yellow-green middle rib. Flowers are bisexual, clustered in glomerules at the end of stems and branches, forming short and dense spike-shaped inflorescences. C. glaucum flowers and bears fruits from July till September. Seeds are black-brown, rounded. One plant produces up to 3000 seeds.Distribution.
It is a Eurasian weed species, now nearly cosmopolitan, not entering subarctic regions. This species occurs throughout the European part of the former Soviet Union, in Central Asia, in Caucasus, in the south of Siberia, in the Far East (Sakhalin, Kamchatka, Ussuri river basin). Distributed through out Western Europe, Greenland, Anterior and Central Asia, northern China, Korea, Mongolia, North America.Ecology.
Anthropochore, autochore. Halophyte - it tolerates salinization. This weed prefers light soils (sandy and humous).Economic significance.
Weed in crops and vegetable gardens, it grows as ruderal plant along dampish shores of rivers and lakes, on solonchaks, along roads, near houses, on dumps. It contains saponin in its vegetative parts. It has some value as a forage - camels eats this plant well. Control measures include careful cleaning of crop seeds, crop rotation with winter cereals, tilled crops, and perennial fodder grasses. Early autumn plowing and timely spring tillage are recommended. Timely inter-row tillage is used in tilled crops.Reference citations.
Keller B.A., ed. 1934. Weed plants of the USSR. Leningrad: AN SSSR. V. 2: 111-112. (In Russian)Komarov V.L., B.K.Shishkin, eds. 1936. Flora of the USSR. Moscow & Leningrad: AN SSSR. V. 6: 52-53. (In Russian)
Korsmo E. 1933. Weed plants of modern farming. Moscow & Leningrad: Gos.izd. kolkh. i sovkh. lit. 92-94 pp. (In Russian)
Nikitin V.V. 1983. Weed plants of the USSR flora. Leningrad: Nauka. 454 pp. (In Russian)