Saturday, September 03, 2011

Ice Plant Flower (Sesuvium Portulacastrum Aizoaceae)

Ice Plant Flower Sesuvium Portulacastrum Aizoaceae. Sesuvium portulacastrum. Seaside Purslane. Family Aizoaceae.

Local Names.—Chara (Guam); Tarampulit, Karampalit, Dampalit, Bilangbilang (Philippines); Verdolaga de Costa (Cuba). A succulent, branching, prostrate, strand plant of wide tropical distribution, sometimes forming mounds on the sandy beach. Leaves opposite, entire, nearly veinless; flowers axillary, without petals; calyx 5-parted, green outside, purplish or rosecolored within; stamens many; styles 3 to 5; capsule 3 to 5-celled, circumscissile through the middle, the upper part like a lid, falling away when ripe, and leaving the lower part attached to the plant; seeds black, shining, smooth.

The entire plant is eaten cooked like spinach. It is rather salty. In some parts of lndia it is cultivated as a pot herb. References:

Sesuvium portulacastrum Stickman, Herb. Amb. 1754; Amoen. Acad. 4: 136. 1759.

I, (sookietex) the creator of this work, hereby release it into the public domain. This applies worldwide. In case this is not legally possible, I grant any entity the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.

If This image is subject to copyright in your jurisdiction, i (sookietex) the copyright holder have irrevocably released all rights to it, allowing it to be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, used, modified, built upon, or otherwise exploited in any way by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, with or without attribution of the author, as if in the public domain.

Ice Plant Flower (Sesuvium Portulacastrum Aizoaceae)

TEXT CREDIT: Elihu Root collection of United States documents

2 comments:

Dru said...

Thanks for the information on and sharing your image of the Ice Plant Flower. Very nice.

sookietex said...

Our pleasure. Thank you Dru.

Post a Comment