Purslane
Portulaca oleracea
Family · Portulacaceae · Harmless
The low, fleshy plant of summer vegetable gardens, which half the Alentejo cooks in soup and the rest of the country pulls up as a weed. Reddish stems and fat little spoon-shaped leaves.
Fields and pasture · Town and roadside · Roadsides and waste ground
Also known ascommon purslane, pigweed
How to tell it
Prostrate, with thick reddish stems that snap easily, and succulent spoon-shaped leaves. Tiny yellow flowers that open only in the morning. No latex at all.
What it is confused with
Prostrate spurge
Euphorbia prostrata
This is the confusion that matters, because they share the vegetable patch and the low habit. Break a stem: spurge bleeds white latex at once and is toxic; purslane bleeds nothing and its stem is thick and succulent.
What it is for
Purslane soup with cheese and a poached egg is a summer Alentejo dish. It is also eaten raw in salad, and is among the wild plants richest in omega 3.
Traditionally used as food. This is not permission to eat it.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
Community
No approved contributions for this entry yet.
Nothing appears here without a person reading it first. Contributions do not replace the entry or its warnings: until a botanist confirms, what is written above stands.