FoI
Tartary Buckwheat
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Tartary Buckwheat
A Introduced Photo: Saroj Kumar Kasaju
Common name: Tartary Buckwheat, Duckwheat, India buckwheat, India wheat, Green buckwheat • Nepali: तिते फापर Tite Phaapar
Botanical name: Fagopyrum tataricum    Family: Polygonaceae (Knotweed family)
Synonyms: Fagopyrum dentatum, Fagopyrum rotundatum, Polygonum tataricum

Tartary Buckwheat is a domesticated food plant, related to Common Buckwheat. It is often counted as a cereal, but unlike the true cereals the buckwheats are not members of the grass family. It is an annual herb, with stems erect, green, 1-3 ft tall, branched, striped, papillate. Leaf-stalks are about as long as blade; leaf blade broadly triangular, 2-7 x 2-8 cm, both surfaces papillate along veins, base heart-shaped or flat, margin entire, tip pointed; ocrea brown, about 5 mm, membranous, oblique. Inflorescence at branch-ends or in leaf-axils, racemose, several racemes together paniculate, lax; bracts ovate, 2-3 mm, tip pointed, each 2-4-flowered. Flower-stalks are 3-4 mm, jointed at middle. Flowers are white or greenish; tepals elliptic, about 2 mm. Stamens included. Stigmas capitate. Seed-pods are much exceeding persistent perianth, black-brown, narrowly ovoid, trigonous, 5-6 mm, surfaces grooved; angles rounded below middle, sharply pointed above, sometimes sinuate-toothed along angles. Flowering: May-September.

Identification credit: Saroj Kumar Kasaju, Chris Chadwell Photographed in Leh, Ladakh.

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