BACK to Plant Index BACK to Plant Index
Purslane
(Portulaca oleracea)
also known as Pussly
Not a native plant.
Purslane is a native of Africa and India. It has been eaten for over 2000 years in India and Iran. Many varieties have been bred to be better garden vegetable plants. It was taken to Europe in the 1400s as a salad plant. While it was developed as a medicinal herb there too it was definitely considered to be a yummy food. Purslane escaped from early settlers gardens very quickly. One of my books, The Rodale Herb Book, mentions that explorer Samuel de Champlain's (the man the lake is named after, and if you don't know what lake, go find out because you should) men were very surprised to find the Native Americans weeding it out of their corn patches.
At one time this was highly valued as a salad or cooked vegetable because of its high iron content. You can get real sick if you don't have enough iron. Iron is need for good blood. Meat and some other greens are a source of iron too. I have eaten purslane and remember it as VERY good. I think it had been lightly steamed and served with a bit of lemon juice and oil and pepper....it was served as a cold salad.
In Stalking the Wild Asparagus, Gibbons writes that a few plants will supply a family. You pinch the tips off the plants to gather fresh purslane...that way the plant continues to grow and make more tips. He found some old English recipes for purslane pickles, but it was too much work. However, an easy dill pickle recipe worked, just substitute purslane for cucumber. See his book for many recipes.
When purslane was brought to the sunny dry lands that it loves of the Southwest the Indians found that you can grind the seeds to make a good meal (like corn meal). Mixed half and half with wheat flour it makes a dark pancake like buckwheat does. We usually don't have enough of it growing to do that.
The thick, fleshy pinkish stems are good to eat, as are the leaves.
This photo to the right is bigger than life size by a third, more or less.
The plant in a few weeks went from a small specimen to a nice mat. It is handsome enough to plant, and easy to pull out if you get too much.
Study pointers:
- If you happen to have the ornamental flower portulaca in your garden go look at it closely. Compare it to the purslane. They have some features in common because they belong to the same family. What did you notice?
- If you don't have portulaca growing, but you have a hot, sunny spot to plant them in, how about planting some! They often seed themselves so next year the annual plants will come up by themselves. Annual plants only live one year...they sprout, grow, flower and make their seeds and then die. Their seeds wait until it is time to grow the next year and the cycle begins again. Pretty cool, huh!?
- Did you know that when margarine was first invented (sometime around 1940) it was called oleo? It is made from vegetable oils. Look again at the botanical name of this plant and think about a possible feature of purslane I did not mention.
This site designed and maintained by Emma Craib
who welcomes your
comments and suggestions !
