AY Honors/Edible Wild Plants/Amaranth

Amaranth is used as a general term for all members of the plant genus Amaranthus (family Amaranthaceae). The genus contains several well-known garden plants, such as love-lies-bleeding (A. caudatus), a native of India, a vigorous hardy annual, with dark purplish flowers crowded in handsome drooping spikes. Another species A. hypochondriacus, is prince's feather, another Indian annual, with deeply-veined lance-shaped leaves, purple on the under face, and deep crimson flowers densely packed on erect spikes.

The leaves and seeds of Amaranthus species are edible: Amaranthus seed was one of the staple foodstuffs of the Incas, and it is known as kiwicha in the Andes today. The seed was used also by the Aztecs and other Amerindian peoples in Mexico to prepare ritual drinks and foods. To this day, amaranth seeds are toasted much like popcorn and mixed with honey or molasses to make a treat called alegría in Mexican Spanish.

Amaranth was used in several Aztec ceremonies, where images of their gods were made with Amaranth mixed with honey. The images were cut to be eaten by the people. This looked like the christian comunion to the catholic priests, so the cultivation of this seed was forbidden for centuries. Amaranth was recovered from wild varieties..

The protein in the seed is particularly well suited to human nutritional needs, and interest in this crop (A. Cruentis and A. hypochondriaca) was revived in the 1970s.

Myth, Legend and Poetry

AMARANTH, or AMARANG (from the Gr. amarantos, unwithering), a name chiefly used in poetry, and applied to certain plants which, from not soon fading, typified immortality. Thus Milton (Paradise Lost, iii. 353) --

"Immortal amarant, a flower which once

In paradise, fast by the tree of life,

Began to bloom; but soon for man's offence

To heaven removed, where first it grew, there grows,

And flowers aloft, shading the fount of life,

And where the river of bliss through midst of heaven

Rolls o'er elysian flowers her amber stream:

With these that never fade the spirits elect

Bind their resplendent locks."

It should be noted that the proper spelling of the word is amarant; the more common spelling seems to have come from a hazy notion that the final syllable is the Greek word anthos, "flower," which enters into a vast number of botanical names.

In ancient Greece the amaranth (also called chrusanthemon and elichrusos) was sacred to Ephesian Artemis. It was supposed to have special healing properties, and as a symbol of immortality was used to decorate images of the gods and tombs. In legend, Amarynthus (a form of Amarantus) was a hunter of Artemis and king of Euboea; in a village of Amarynthus, of which he was the eponymous hero, there was a famous temple of Artemis Amarynthia or Amarysia (Strabo x. 448; Pausan. i. 31, p. 5).

References

• Lenz, Botanik der alt. Greich. und Rom. (1859)
• J. Murr, Die Pflanzenwelt in der griech. Mythol. (1890)
• 1911 encyclopedia entry, with some more modern additions

Other things called Amaranth

"Globe amaranth" belongs to an allied genus, Gomphrena, and is also a native of India. It is an annual about 18 inches high, with solitary round heads of flowers; the heads are violet from the colour of the bracts which surround the small flowers.

Amaranth wood or Purpleheart is from the unrelated Peltogyne (Fabaceae). It has a unique dark purplish tone to it, and is used decoratively.

Amaranth is a dark red to purple dye once used for colouring food but now banned by the FDA.

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