Love Lies Bleeding may refer to:

Amaranthus caudatus is a species of annual flowering plant. It goes by common names such as love-lies-bleeding,pendant amaranth, tassel flower,velvet flower,foxtail amaranth, and quilete.

Many parts of the plants, including the leaves and seeds, are edible, and are frequently used as a source of food in India and South America – where it is the most important Andean species of Amaranthus, known as kiwicha. (see also Amaranth seed and Andean ancient plants) This species, as with many other of the amaranths, are originally from the American tropics. The exact origin is unknown, as A. caudatus is believed to be a wild Amaranthus hybridus aggregate.

The red color of the inflorescences is due to a high content of betacyanins, as in the related species known as "Hopi red dye" amaranth. Ornamental garden varieties sold under the latter name are either Amaranthus cruentus or a hybrid between A. cruentus and A. powelli. In indigenous agriculture, A. cruentus is the Central American counterpart to South American A. caudatus.

Love-Lies-Bleeding is the title of a three-act play by Don DeLillo. It is his third play and had a world-premiere reading May 2, 2005, at Boise Contemporary Theater in Boise, Idaho, directed by DeLillo himself. Subsequently the play has been produced at the Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and again in Boise at Boise Contemporary Theater. The international premiere was July 7, 2007 in Sydney, Australia with Lee Lewis directing Robyn Nevin, Australia's most acclaimed theatre actress, in the Sydney Theatre Company production.

Plot

The play concerns an artist named Alex Macklin in the last years of his life, and the effect his condition has on his son, Sean, and his second and fourth wives, Toinette and Lia, respectively. After a major second stroke, Alex is left in a persistent vegetative state and the other characters convene to reach a consensus about his fate. Sean pleads for mercy killing, arguing that his father is no longer alive except in a narrow technical sense. Toinette is sympathetic to this idea but later in the play evinces doubt and uncertainty about the metaphysical nature of their undertaking. Lia is initially opposed to the idea, arguing for a natural death without intervention, though later she agrees to Sean's plan to sedate and ultimately end Alex's life with the aid of morphine. The play also contains three scenes portraying earlier episodes in Alex's life with Lia and with Toinette.