Chenopod and amaranth pollen: electron-microscopic identification.

Electron-microscopic criteria for distinguishing chenopod and amaranth pollen have been found in the number of minute holes and spinules, and especially in the ratio between them, which is 1.5 in amaranths and 1.6 in chenopods. Sixty-eight percent of total fossil pollen from a Classic Maya level (carbon-14 age 1380 +/- 120 B.P.) in a lake-sediment core from El Salvador belongs to wild amaranths, which presumably invaded corn fields. Fossil chenopodiaceous pollen from a depth of 3.85 meters (about 4000 years old) at Tinte, the Netherlands, is mostly Atriplex littoralis, which was evidently very common on coastal marshes in the middle sub-Boreal period.