Fat-hen

Chenopodium album is an erect annual herb of the amaranth family, commonly reaching 30 to 150 cm tall, with a grooved, often reddish-streaked stem. The alternate leaves are broadly diamond-shaped to lance-shaped, irregularly toothed, and typically coated on the undersurface with a mealy, whitish bloom of bladder-like hairs that gives the plant its frosted appearance. Tiny greenish flowers lacking petals are densely clustered in branched, spike-like panicles in the leaf axils and at the stem tips. Each flower ripens into a single small lens-shaped black seed enclosed by the dried perianth. A cosmopolitan weed of Old World origin, it thrives on disturbed, fertile ground including fields, gardens, waste places, and roadsides, and is among the most widespread weeds on Earth.