132; see text Chenopodium is a genus of numerous species of perennial or annual herbaceous flowering plants known as the goosefoot, which occur almost anywhere in the world.

[2] The species of Chenopodium (s.str., description according to Fuentes et al. 2012)[2] are annual or perennial herbs, shrubs or small trees.

Their thin or slightly fleshy leaf blade is linear, rhombic or triangular-hastate, with entire or dentate or lobed margins.

Flowers consist of (4–) 5 perianth segments connate, basally or close to the middle, usually membranous margined and with a roundish to keeled back; almost always 5 stamens, and one ovary with 2 stigmas.

Mosyakin & Clemants (2002, 2008) separated the glandular species as genus Dysphania (which includes epazote) and Teloxys in tribe Dysphanieae.

[citation needed] The seeds are eaten by many birds, such as the yellowhammer (Emberiza citrinella) of Europe or the white-winged fairy-wren (Malurus leucopterus) of Australia.

On the Greek island of Crete, tender shoots and leaves of a species called krouvida (κρουβίδα) or psarovlito (ψαρόβλητο) are eaten by the locals, boiled or steamed.

[citation needed] Members of the eastern European Yamnaya culture also harvested white goosefoot as an apparent cereal substitute to round out an otherwise mostly meat and dairy diet c. 3500–2500 BC.

[citation needed] Goosefoot pollen, in particular of the widespread and usually abundant C. album, is an allergen to many people and a common cause of hay fever.

[citation needed] According to the 1889 book The Useful Native Plants of Australia, Chenopodium auricomum "is another of the salt-bushes, which, besides being invaluable food for stock, can be eaten by man.

The cultivation is easy: sow the seed in April (October) in a well-manured bed, for the plant is greedy; water it.

In less than eight days afterwards another gathering may take place, and so on to the end of the year.†Chenopodium wetzleri fossil seeds of the Chattian stage, Oligocene, are known from the Oberleichtersbach Formation in the Rhön Mountains, central Germany.