A large family, widely distributed, growing usually in salty or
alkaline soil; herbs or shrubs, generally succulent and salty or
bitter, often covered with white scurf or meal, without stipules;
leaves thick, usually alternate, sometimes none; flowers perfect or
imperfect, small, greenish, without petals; calyx with two to five
sepals, rarely with only one, pistillate flowers sometimes with no
calyx; stamens as many as the sepals, or fewer, and opposite them;
ovary mostly superior with one to three styles or stigmas; fruit small,
dry, with one seed, sometimes with a bladder-like covering. Spinach
and Beets belong to this family; many are "weeds," such as Lamb's
Quarters.
[Illustration: Wild Buckwheat--Eriogonum racemosum.