Chenopodium album

Chenopodium album is a fast-growing weedy annual plant in the genus Chenopodium. Though cultivated in some regions, the plant is elsewhere considered a weed. Common names include lamb’s quarters, melde, goosefoot, manure weed, wild spinach and fat-hen, though the latter two are also applied to other species of the genus Chenopodium, for which reason it is often distinguished as white goosefoot.[2][3][4] Chenopodium album is extensively cultivated and consumed in Northern India as a food crop known as bathua.[5][6]

Its native range is obscure due to extensive cultivation,[7] but includes most of Europe,[8] from where Linnaeus described the species in 1753.[9] Plants native in eastern Asia are included under C. album, but often differ from European specimens.[10] It is widely naturalised elsewhere, e.g. Africa,[11] Australasia,[12] North America,[4] and Oceania,[3] and now occurs almost everywhere (even, apparently in Antarctica)[1] in soils rich in nitrogen, especially on wasteland.[citation needed]