Plant · P-705

Grain Amaranth

Amaranthus cruentus

Grain amaranth produces a nutrient-dense pseudo-grain and an edible leaf from the same planting, harvesting leaves like spinach for up to eight months while the seed heads ripen behind them. The seed is unusually rich in protein and lysine, and can be popped, toasted, ground into flour or boiled into porridge, while the deep taproot pulls minerals up from the subsoil and the cut plant makes strong cattle feed. It thrives in hot, sheltered, full-sun conditions across a wide temperature range but is killed outright by any frost, and it should not be eaten fresh off nitrogen-rich or heavily fertilised ground, since it concentrates nitrate in its leaves under those conditions.