Sphenoclea zeylanica Gaertn.

Chicken Spike; Gooseweed

Herb

Annual

Vascular

Chicken Spike is an introduced annual in the Chicken-Spike family (Sphenocleaceae). It is native to warm temperate areas of the Eastern Hemisphere from Africa to Asia. The systematic placement of Sphenoclea has been problematic, and it has been placed variously in the Campanulaceae or in its on family. It also shares certain features with the Phytolaccaceae and Primulaceae. Chicken Spike is a wetland species occurring on river banks, in swamps, along the margins of lakes and ponds, in wet ditches, and in low fields. It has a long history of association with rice cultivation, and Chicken Spike likely was introduced into the United States as a containment of rice seed. In Alabama it occurs primarily along major rivers in the Coastal Plain. Chicken Spike is a tap-rooted annual. Stems are green, glabrous, and hollow. The stems are often thick and spongy near the base. The leaves are alternate, elliptic to oblanceolate in outline, and entire. The leaves are petiolate with blade tissue decurrent nearly to the base of the petiole. Flowers are produced in dense, green, cylindrical, terminal spikes. Flowers are white and actinomorphic (radially symmetric) . They open from the base to the apex of the spike. The fruit is a circumscissile (splitting along a transverse circular line with the “lid” falling off) capsule with numerous seed.--A. Diamond

A native of the Eastern Hemisphere. First collected in Alabama in 1972 from the Eufaula NWR (Carter et al 2014).

Not Native OBL (NWPL)

Carter, R., J.C. Jones, and R.H. Goddard. 2014. Spenoclea zeylanica (Sphenocleaceae) in North America--Dispersal, Ecology, and Morphology. Castanea 79: 33-50.