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Alternanthera bettzickiana (Regel) G.Nicholson

Synonym	:	Alternanthera bettzickiana f. kurzii Voss
Family	:	Amaranthaceae
Local name	:	English- Calico plant
Flowering and fruiting period	:	Year around
Distribution	:	Throughout the tropics and sub tropics
Distribution in Kerala	:	All districts
Habitat	:	Open, sunny sites at elevations up to 2,000 metres.
Uses	:	The cooked vegetable is given to anemic children in order to improve their health. The plant has an extensive root system and is cultivated in plantations as a ground cover and to prevent soil erosion. The plant can be trimmed and grown as a low hedge.
Key botanical characters: Erect or ascending, bushy perennial herbs, up to 5-45 cm; stem and branches villous when young but soon glabrescent. Leaves are opposite, 1-3.5 x 0.5-2 cm, 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. Head inflorescence is axillary, sessile, usually solitary, globose or ovoid, 5-6 mm in diameter. Tepals are 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.