Plants vegetatively resembling C. glaucum, but mostly erect, to 1.2 m high, and often red-pigmented. Flowers bisexual, in small clusters aggregated into axillary spike-like panicles; tepals 2–5 (mostly 3), united in the lower half to two-thirds and largely enclosing the seed at maturity; stamens 1–3. Seed vertical, circular, 1–1.2 mm diam., blackish. Flowers Apr.–May.
VVP, VRiv, GipP, OtP, CVU. Also WA. Native to South America. The earliest Victorian collection is from 1987, from a seasonally wet depression in heavy basaltic clay at Rockbank, about 25 km west of Melbourne. It has now been collected from a broader region including the south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne, the Mornington Peninsula, Lake Burrumbeet near Ballarat, and Lake Leaghur in northern Victoria. At the Western Treatment Plant at Point Wilson it forms extensive monocultures on the exposed lagoon beds.
Source:
Walsh, N.G. (1996). Chenopodiaceae. In: Walsh, N.G.; Entwisle, T.J., Flora of Victoria Vol. 3, Dicotyledons Winteraceae to Myrtaceae, pp. 129–199. Inkata Press, Melbourne.
