All plants /Ground /Purslane
Purslane
Portulaca oleracea, purslane family. Abundant in East and Central and West Texas.
At a glance
- What
- Succulent stems and paddle leaves
- How
- Raw for crunch, or cooked into eggs and stews (verdolagas)
- When
- The hot months, June to September
- Where
- Sidewalk cracks, gardens, bare summer dirt
- Value
- Omega-3s, unusually rich for a green
Caution: The look-alike is prostrate spurge: snap a stem, and milky white sap means spurge, drop it. Purslane bleeds clear.
Identification
Fat, smooth, reddish stems hugging the ground with rubbery paddle leaves. It thrives in July heat that kills lettuce at forty paces.
In the kitchen
Lemony crunch raw; silky when cooked. Across the border it is verdolagas, simmered with pork and tomatillo, which is the best argument for it.
Photo: Didier Descouens, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Forages well with
Forage safely. Never eat a wild plant on this site's word alone. Confirm identity with several sources, learn the look-alikes, and when in doubt, leave it in the ground.