Red-Leaf Amaranth, Calaloo
Mild and delicious heat-loving greens, with a flavor like spinach. Beautiful coloring, like a watercolor painting on the leaves, is red in the center and green on the edges. Clip the young plants for cooking greens when they are about 8" tall; you can get several harvests from each plant. The flavor is very much like spinach--you might confuse them in a blind tasting--but these greens love hot soil and hot weather. They do need moisture to produce well. Known in the Carribean as callaloo, and in China as Yin choy.This is Amaranthus tricolor, a different species from the grain amaranths, and the seeds are small, black, and shiny instead of white, cream, or tan like the grain amaranths. While the seeds are not poisonous, they are extremely hard, making them very difficult to digest.