Taxonomy: Plantae > Tracheophyta > Equisetopsida > Caryophyllales > Amaranthaceae > Alternanthera > A. bettzickiana

Description: Erect or ascending, bushy perennial herbs, up to 5-45 cm; stem and branches villous when young but soon glabrescent. Glossy, green leaves are lance-shaped with a distinctly undulating leaf margin that curls upwards. It has a wrinkled or curly leaf texture. Leaves opposite, narrowly or more broadly elliptic to oblanceolate or rhomboid-ovate, acute or acuminate at the apex, long-attenuate into an indistinctly demarcated petiole below, often purple-suffused and not rarely variegated. Heads axillary, sessile, usually solitary, globose or ovoid, 5-6 mm in diameter. Tepals white, lanceolate, acute, mucronate with the excurrent midrib, the outer 3 prominently 3-nerved below and darker in the nerved area, with a line of minutely barbellate white hairs along each side of this area, the hairs becoming denser towards the base of the tepal; inner 2 tepals slightly shorter, usually 1-2 nerved. Pseudo-staminodes as long as the filaments, laciniate at the apex.

Flowering and Fruiting: February - June

Uses: The species has the potential to be used for phytoremediation of cadmium and lead.. bettzickiana is used to treat anaemia in children

Cultivation: wild/cultivated.

References

http://www.plantsoftheworldonline.org

https://indiabiodiversity.org