Goosefoots
Chenopodium album
An upright annual of disturbed ground, reaching a metre or more, with diamond- to lance-shaped grey-green leaves dusted in a white mealy bloom and tight greenish spikes of tiny petal-less flowers. Chenopodium album is an aggregate of intergrading forms, but the segregates matter little in the kitchen: leaves and shoot tips cook down much like spinach, and the ripe seed can be dried, rubbed clean and ground.
Arable field margins, allotments, gardens, muck heaps, building plots and other freshly turned, nitrogen-rich soil. Common and widespread across lowland Britain and Ireland, thinning out in the uplands and on poor acid ground.
Best eaten cooked — the leaves hold oxalates and saponins, and plants on heavily manured soil accumulate nitrates. In the same disturbed ground, check for black nightshade (Solanum nigrum): its leaves are thin and glossy, with none of the white mealy dusting seen here. Skip sprayed arable margins.
Always use more than one reference to confirm a plant. You are responsible for what you choose to forage.
Habit and stem
A single ridged, grooved stem branching upwards, anything from ankle height on a trodden path to well over a metre on rich soil. The stem is often flushed or flecked red at the leaf joints, which is the first thing visible from a few metres away.
Mealy leaves
Diamond- to lance-shaped, coarsely and irregularly toothed, and coated underneath and at the growing tip with a white farinose bloom that rubs off greasily between finger and thumb. A leaf that is thin, glossy and entirely bloomless is not this plant.
Flowers
Dense, dull greenish clusters packed into spikes at the stem tips and leaf axils, with no petals and no scent. Nothing here reads as a showy flower, which separates it at a glance from the small white stars of black nightshade growing in the same soil.
Telling it from orache
Oraches (Atriplex species) are also mealy and also edible, so the mistake is harmless, but the seed settles it: orache seed sits between two triangular bracteoles, while here it is wrapped in a five-lobed papery perianth.
Updated 2026-08-07T20:46:18.028Z · Part of the shared Foragers Log catalogue · Fruit