Fruiting bodies. Photo: Forest and Kim Starr, Florida, USA

Flowering and fruiting plants. Photo: Don Wood, south coast, NSW

Plant. Photo: Zoya Alukova, California, USA

Line drawing in Britton, N.L., and A. Brown. 1913. An illustrated flora of the northern United States, Canada and the British Possessions. Vol. 2: 14

Common Name

Mexican Tea, Wormseed

Family

Chenopodiaceae

Notes

Introduced annual or perennial forb to 1m tall.  Leaves highly aromatic, smelling of crushed ants, alternating up the stems.  Leaves to 20cm long, to 40mm wide, flat, upper surface hairless, the lower surface covered in yellow glandular hairs, the margins lobed, or toothed, with pointed tips.  Flowers small (less than 3mm across), green, in small circular clusters, short spikes, or occasionally a single flower, forming leafy or leafless interrupted panicles.  The topmost flowers of the cluster bisexual, the side flowers female. Chenopodium ambrosioides in NSW.

Description (page 258) and photo (page 259) (as Chenopodium ambrosioides) in G.M. Cunningham, WE Mulham, PL Milthorpe and J H Leigh (1981 and later printings) Plants of Western New South Wales

PlantNET description (as Chenopodium ambrosioides):   http://plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&lvl=sp&name=Chenopodium~ambrosioides