Persistent Purslane
By Audrey Stallsmith
I have made a satisfactory dinner on several accounts, simply off a dish of purslane which I gathered in my cornfield, boiled and salted.
Henry David Thoreau—On Walden Pond
Mom was so enthusiastic about purslane (Portulaca oleracea) that she used to freeze some of it for our use during the winter. She had good reason for doing so, since that weed actually contains more nutrients—including almost the whole alphabet of vitamins and multiple minerals as well as Omega 3s and melatonin—than most of the vegetables she grew on purpose did.
I recall feeding it to incubated guinea keets too, simply because it was an edible plant that was easy for me to recognize, in addition to being good for them. The guineas loved it. Of course, they loved dandelion greens too, so they weren’t what you would call overly picky!
Since purslane—also known as wild portulaca or pusley—is a succulent plant, it can be slimy when cooked. The flavor isn’t bad, though, somewhat similar to boiled spinach. The ancients used to eat it raw in salads when it was young and would sometimes pickle it after it aged. It grows as an self-sown annual worldwide, sometimes as a perennial in zones 9-11. As far as I know, Mom never attempted to plant it, because it always popped up in the garden anyhow.
For that reason, not everyone was a fan. In 1821, William Cobbett described purslane in The American Gardener as “a mischievous weed that Frenchmen and pigs eat when they can get nothing else. Both use it in salad, that is to say, raw.” (We can guess that Cobbett probably wasn’t much of a fan of the French either!)
And Charles Dudley Warner complained in his 1870 My Summer in a Garden, "The sort of weed which I most hate is the pussley, a fat, ground-clinging, spreading, greasy thing, and the most propagatious (it is not my fault if the word is not in the dictionary) plant I know.'' Because purslane's succulent leaves often allow it to survive without water until it re-roots, it is persistent!
That can be a good thing, since ancient herbalists held that the plant had a cooling quality, would assuage thirst, and even protect you from evil spirits. They also recommended it for sore mouths and swollen gums. Since I’ve had a few lingering pangs since a recent dental appointment, maybe I should try it!
Keep in mind, though, that the plant does contain oxalic acid. So it probably should be avoided by persons with gout, kidney stones, or rheumatoid arthritis--and consumed only in reasonable amounts by the rest of us.
Although the wild type of purslane has inconspicuous yellow flowers which only open briefly around noon, you can find ornamental purslanes for sale these days. They often are sold under the same name as common purslane, Portulaca oleracea, but The New Sunset Western Garden Book holds that they actually are cultivars of Portulaca umbraticola instead. In any case, they generally produce single blooms, about 1 1/2 inches wide, each of which only lasts a single day.
I started a red-flowered variety from seeds this spring. Since those seeds were very tiny, it took a while for the plants to reach blooming size, but they are budding now. And their leaves do look much like those of purslane.
When I saw some of the wild type in the garden the other day, I was tempted to cut and boil it. Not because I particularly missed it, but because I miss my mother, who would tell me to eat it because it is good for me. Now that I think about it, purslane is much like mothers, in that it gives generously while demanding little in return.
The Portulaca oleracea image is from O. W. Thome's 1885 Flora von Deutschland Osterreich und der Schweiz, courtesy of plantillustrations.org.