Purslane Is The Most Common Weed That You Can Eat (Bewareof Spurge)

Yes, you can eat this common weed, and tonight I am going to change your mind about the one plant you have probably pulled out of your garden more times than any other. It is purslane. It is growing right now in the cracks of driveways and the edges of beds across most of the world. It carries more of the omega-3 fatty acids you normally associate with fish than any other leafy green on earth, and people have cultivated it deliberately for thousands of years. But before you go anywhere near it, there is one plant it is confused with, a plant called spurge, that grows in exactly the same places, looks passably similar at a glance, and should never go anywhere near your mouth. So we are going to do this properly. What purslane is, how to tell it from spurge in two seconds flat, what part of it you can eat, which is more than you think, the one caution that applies to a small number of people, and how to actually use it. My name is Malcolm Ashby and I have been growing things and gathering things for 50 years. Weeding is a strange business when you think about it. It takes up half our time in the garden, it is oddly satisfying, and yet a weed is nothing more than a plant growing where somebody decided it should not, that is the whole definition. It is not a botanical category, it is an opinion, and tonight's plant is the best possible argument that the opinion is sometimes wrong. My old allotment friend Bert used to weed purslane out of one end of his plot and eat it at the other, which sounds mad until you see how much of it there is. Let me say one thing, and then I will not bring it up again. Every plant I know, its look-alike, and what it is worth in dollars, I have put into one book. On page 31 there is a weed that grows in most backyards, that people spray on sight, and that replaces the $5 tea they have been buying for years. It is at thebackyardgoldmine.com and the link is under this video. If you want it, it is there. That is all. So what are we looking at? Common purslane, Portulaca oleracea, is a low sprawling plant that hugs the ground and spreads outward in a circle from a single central taproot. A well-grown one can be 30 inches across, though most of what you find will be smaller and flatter. The stems are the giveaway, and I want you to fix them in your mind now. They are smooth, they are thick and juicy, properly succulent like a little jade plant, and they are very often a distinct reddish or purple-bronze colour. The leaves are small, rounded, paddle-shaped, thick and fleshy, and they grow in clusters, often looking like little rosettes at the ends and joints of the stems. The flowers, when they come, are small and yellow and open in sunshine. Now the safety, because this comes first and everything else is decoration. The plant you must be able to rule out is spurge, which sprawls flat in the same driveways and beds and has a broadly similar habit. Here are the three tests, and any one of them settles it. First the stem. Purslane has that thick, smooth, juicy, succulent stem, often red. Spurge has a thin, wiry, woody stem, and the whole plant is altogether more spindly and less fleshy. Second, the leaves. Purslane leaves are thick and plump. You can feel the substance of them between finger and thumb. Spurge leaves are thin and flat, like ordinary little leaves, and they very often carry a darker maroon blotch or marking on them, which purslane never does. Third, and this is the one that ends all argument, so make it a habit, snap a stem. Purslane bleeds clear, watery sap. Spurge bleeds a milky white latex, immediately and obviously, and that white sap is an irritant to skin and eyes and is not to be eaten. White sap means stop. Every time, no exceptions, on every plant, even one you are sure about, because it takes a second and it is the difference between a free vegetable and an unpleasant evening. That is the whole identification. Thick red succulent stems, plump paddle leaves, clear sap. Once you have looked at both plants side by side one time, you will never confuse them again and you will start spotting purslane everywhere, which is rather the problem with learning any of this. It ruins your ability to walk past things. Now, why the plant grows the way it does? Because understanding this makes you a better forager of it. Most people assume purslane is a perennial, because it is always in the same place year after year. It is not. It is an annual that self-seeds with tremendous enthusiasm. After the yellow flowers fade, each one forms a little seed capsule and those capsules are packed with hundreds of tiny black seeds. They are self-pollinating, so they do not even need an insect to visit and a single plant can produce tens of thousands of seeds in a season, which stay viable in the soil for years. That is why it comes back. That is also why hoeing it is a losing battle. And there is a second reason it is a losing battle that catches everyone out. If you hoe purslane and leave the plant lying on the soil, it will very often simply root back in from the stem nodes and carry on growing, because a succulent stem is essentially a reservoir of water and it does not need the root to survive the afternoon. So the traditional way of dealing with it, chopping it up and leaving it, is close to a propagation method. It grows in conditions that would kill most things, sidewalk cracks, heavy clay, gravel, drought, blazing heat in August when the lettuce has bolted and the spinach has given up. It is one of a small group of plants with a different style of photosynthesis, the sort adapted to heat and dryness, which is exactly why it is at its best in the weeks when the rest of the garden is struggling. Now a quick word before we get to the eating. Most of the people watching this channel are not subscribed. If you enjoy finding out what old and ordinary things are really worth, press subscribe. It costs you nothing and you can always change your mind later, right then. Let us talk about what is actually in it and what to do with it. Purslane is loaded. It is a good source of vitamin A and vitamin C. It carries potassium and magnesium and iron. And here is the headline that has made it fashionable in the last 20 years. It contains alpha-linolenic acid, an omega-3 fatty acid, at levels higher than any other leafy green plant that has been measured, the sort of fatty acid people normally reach for flaxseed or fish oil to get. A useful way to hold it in your head is to think of it as being roughly in the family of spinach, similar in the way it behaves in a pan, similar in the general shape of its nutrition, but with that fatty acid profile that nothing else in the salad bowl can match. It has been eaten across the world for a very long time. It turns up in Mediterranean cooking, in Mexican cooking as verdalagas, in Middle Eastern salads, in Indian and Chinese kitchens, and it was grown deliberately in European gardens for centuries as a salad vegetable before it fell out of fashion and got demoted to a weed. Many people have used it traditionally for a range of complaints, and I will not stand here and make claims about that one way or the other, but I will say this. When a plant has been cultivated on purpose by unrelated cultures on four continents for thousands of years, that fact alone tells you it is more than a nuisance in a driveway. One caution, and it applies to a specific group of people, purslane contains a fair quantity of oxalates, the same compounds you find in spinach, rhubarb and beet greens. For most people, eaten in normal quantities, this is of no consequence whatsoever, and you would not think twice about a plate of spinach. If you are someone who forms kidney stones, or you have been told by a doctor to keep to a low oxalate diet, then purslane belongs in the same category as spinach for you, and you should treat it exactly the same way you already treat those. Cooking and discarding the water reduces oxalates somewhat, as it does with any of them. Which parts can you eat? All of it. Stems, leaves, flowers and seeds are all edible, though in practice most people concentrate on the leaves and the younger, tenderer stems, because the thickest, older stems can be a bit much. The seeds, if you have the patience to collect them, were ground into flour by several cultures and are perfectly good. Raw or cooked, both work. Raw, it is crisp and juicy, with a mild lemony sourness and a texture somewhere between a green bean and a leaf. It is excellent in a salad, particularly a summer one with tomatoes, and it is a fine thing to graze on while you are pottering about in the garden, which is honestly how I eat most of mine. Here is a detail nobody mentions, and it matters. The flavour depends heavily on how much water the plant has had. A well-watered purslane, growing in decent ground, is mild, fresh and pleasant. The same plant from a bone-dry gravel path in August is markedly more sour and sharp. So if you find some in a hard, dry spot and taste it and dislike it, do not write the plant off. Find some from a damp bed or water a patch for a week and try again. Cooked, it behaves like spinach in that it wilts down and cooks in a minute or two, with one difference you should know in advance. Purslane is mucilaginous, which is a wonderful word that means it goes slightly gelatinous and thickens whatever it is in, much as okra does. Some people are put off by that, others use it deliberately because it makes purslane a superb thickener for soups and stews, and a pot of summer vegetable soup finished with a couple of handfuls of chopped purslane comes out with a lovely body to it that you did not have to add flour to achieve. A few ways to use it that I would actually recommend, chopped into a tomato and cucumber salad with olive oil, lemon and salt, which is essentially how half the Mediterranean eats it, wilted in a pan with garlic and a little chilli, served alongside eggs, stirred into soup at the last minute as a thickener, pickled, which sounds odd and is delicious, the thick stems taking a vinegar brine remarkably well and coming out crunchy, or simply eaten standing up in the garden on a summer morning, which is a perfectly respectable culinary tradition and my own preferred method. And one last practical thought. If you decide you like it, you do not need to hunt for it. You can grow it on purpose. There are cultivated varieties, golden purslane among them, with larger leaves and a more upright habit, and they are the easiest thing in the world to grow because you are asking a weed to be a weed in a place you have chosen. Sow it, water it well and pick it all summer while everything else in the bed is complaining about the heat. So to leave you with the shape of it, thick succulent stems, often red, plump little paddle leaves in rosettes, clear sap when you snap it, never white, thin wiry stems, flat leaves with a maroon blotch and milky sap mean spurge, and spurge stays in the ground. Once you are certain you have in front of you a free green with more omega-3 than anything else you could put in a salad bowl, that thrives in the worst conditions your garden can offer, that has been eaten deliberately for thousands of years, and that you have been pulling up and throwing away for most of your life, whatever you do, don't hoe it up and bin it, not until you have tried it once, properly, from a well-watered patch. If tonight changed your mind about that plant in the driveway, press like before you go, it truly tells me to keep making these, and subscribe if you have not, because next time I am attempting something considerably more ambitious. I grew the 7 most expensive spices in the world at home, saffron among them, and I will show you exactly how each one is done and why one of them costs more per ounce than most people believe possible. Then tell me down in the comments, had you ever heard that purslane was edible, and is it growing in your garden right now? I read every single one, go and have a proper look in that garden, you never know, see you next time.