PlantKey Open ecological atlas
Planner
Home / Browse / Amaranthus / Crispleaf Amaranth
iNaturalist — CC, credited & licensed per image
Amaranthaceae family

Crispleaf Amaranth Amaranthus crispus

Crispleaf Amaranth is an introduced annual herb, found in the lower 48 states. It grows to 0.7 ft.

More about this plant

Amaranthus crispus is a species of flowering plant in the family Amaranthaceae. It is referred to by the common name crispleaf amaranth. It is a herbaceous, sparsely pubescent annual plant. It can grow up to 0.5 m (1.5 ft) in height. It flowers in summer to fall. It usually grows in waste places, disturbed habitats, or near water. It is native to Argentina, Chile and Uruguay and has been introduced into Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Crimea, the former Czechoslovakia, France, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Sardinia, the United States, and the former Yugoslavia. Wikipedia →

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY
Conditions
Sources · Conditions
Cold hardiness (derived) — Hardiness
Hardiness
≥ zone 7 derived from its U.S. range
Size & form
Sources · Size & form
TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) — Height · Foliage
USDA PLANTS — Lifespan
Height
0.7 ft
Lifespan
Annual
Foliage
Broadleaf
In the garden
Ground-cover layer — Sits in the ground-cover of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →
Living mulch / groundcover — Low, ground-hugging grower — can carpet bare soil as a living mulch, shading out weeds and holding moisture.Open guide →
derived roles
Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.

Wildlife & pollinators

How pollinator value is scored →
❧ Caterpillar hosts ~29 caterpillar species

Amaranthus supports ~29 caterpillar species.

Native butterfly & moth caterpillars are the base of the terrestrial food web — most songbirds rear their young almost entirely on them. As a host for native Lepidoptera this is a moderate genus.

Recorded feeding on Amaranthus in North America, including:

Achyra similalis · snout moth Agrotis ipsilon · Dark Sword-Grass Agrotis subterranea · owlet moth Amyna octo · owlet moth Anacamptodes fragilaria · geometer (inchworm) moth Coleophora amaranthella · casebearer moth
+ 8 more species →
Coleophora lineapulvella · casebearer moth Dicymolomia julianalis · Julia's Dicymolomia Discestra trifolii · owlet moth Disclisioprocta stellata · Somber Carpet Epiblema otiosana · Bidens Borer Erynnis martialis · Mottled Duskywing Estigmene acrea · Salt Marsh Moth Helicoverpa zea · Corn Earworm
Keystone count (genus-level) from Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use records. Named species (a documented Nearctic sample, not exhaustive) from NHM HOSTS (CC0).
Species thumbnails re-hosted from iNaturalist — Creative Commons, credited per image (hover for credit). Click any species to see it on iNaturalist. Not exhaustive; many taxa have no openly-licensed photo yet.
How we know this (1) Methods & honest limits
Photosynthesis Direct fact

A recorded categorical fact: each species is tagged C3 (standard), C4 (heat/water-efficient) or CAM (succulent, night-time CO₂ uptake) — or a facultative combination. We only show a trait card for the noteworthy C4/CAM cases; C3 is the unremarkable majority, kept in the data but not surfaced as a card.

Kattge, J. et al. TRY plant trait database — Categorical Traits Dataset (2012).
Derived values are computed from open data by a published method — labelled, cited, and never shown as a direct observation. Full methodology →
Sources for this entry (16) Open & cited
[01] Scientific name & family — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[02] Growth habit & duration — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[03] Native status & distribution — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)
[04] Common name — USDA PLANTS (via GBIF)
[05] Invasive / introduced status — US-RIIS v2.0 (USGS)
[07] Description — Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
[08] Ecological value — Warren II 2026 (CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[11] Photosynthetic pathway — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)
[12] Cold hardiness (derived) — Derived from U.S. range × USDA PHZM zones
[14] Caterpillar host count — Warren II 2026 (Dryad, CC0) · Tallamy host-use counts
[15] Caterpillar species — NHM HOSTS (CC0)
[16] County range — GBIF Open Data — open-licensed occurrences (CC0/CC-BY) → county
Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.
Cite this page Open data, please attribute

PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).

Citation

Loading…

BibTeX 
Loading…