No, not an appalling tribute band but a surprisingly compelling display on the Systematic Beds. This annual love-lies-bleeding looks suitably strung out at the end of September, its long wine-red tassles of crumbly flowers propping up the summer.
The red colour of the inflorescences is due to a high content of betacyanins, also evident in the pink spires of wild beet relatives on the nearby bed, a soft textile studded with emerald green shield bugs.
It is not a characteristic unique to Amaranth that its grain-like seed remains as an unopened bag of impulse-purchased health food grain in my cupboard (see also quinoa….)