BACK to Plant Index BACK to Plant Index
Lamb's Quarters
(Chenopodium album)
also known as White Goosefoot, Pigweed, Wild Spinach
This is a native plant. It is also native to Europe and Asia.
Lamb's Quarters is part of a big family of plants that includes beets, Swiss chard and spinach. It is rich in vitamins C and A (richer than spinach!) and in calcium. Because of the high Vitamin C content it was valued by the Indians of North America as an antiscorbutic.
(Antiscorbutics prevent scurvy...a disease that causes your gums to bleed, your teeth fall out and you could die if you don't get Vitamin C. Sailors often got scurvy before people knew you have to eat fruits like lemons and oranges or other plants like Lamb's Quarters to get C and prevent it. Whole sailing ships were lost when the crew all fell ill and could not work the sails. Sailors ate salted meat and hard biscuits as their standard meal.......yuck....neither contains Vitamin C.)
On the brighter side, both the foliage and seeds of Lamb's Quarters are edible. You may eat the greens either raw in salads or cooked as a vegetable. The seeds can be collected and ground into a meal after they are dried, the meal is used to make bread. You can eat the seeds raw. Children: Never eat plants unless a parent says it is OK! Also, people let their dogs wander off leashes and ....
There is a problem with this plant...it will take over your garden if you give it a chance. In general, they are good for the garden as their long tap root drills down into the soil and loosens it up. On the other hand, that same long tap root makes older plants VERY hard to pull out.
The tight little clusters are the flowers....they sort of look like teeny-weeny pale brocollis.
Study pointers:
- Look at the leaves and compare them to geese feet. Does it really look like a goose foot?!
- Find some Lamb's Quarter you can pull out. Examine the tap root. Find both a young and an old plant to compare the root systems. By the way a tap root is like a carrot (although often skinnier) but in very stony soil tap roots often split up into several main tap roots. Carrots do that too which is why good carrot farms have light, sandy soil.
This site designed and maintained by Emma Craib
who welcomes your
comments and suggestions !
