PURSLANE AND PORTULACA
Plants and detective work go together. When my daughter worked near the Union Square Greenmarket in New York City, she was forever bringing home interesting tropical plants without tags. I dutifully identified them on the spot or, if I wasn’t sure about their names or origins, I did the appropriate research. Some plants were easier to identify than others and a few defied my best efforts. One nameless woody specimen from last summer has been without a moniker for an entire year. I still don’t know what it is, but I do know that it’s growing rapidly. I really need to get a picture of my burgeoning tree onto the Internet so that someone can put a name on it and tell me whether it will eventually be taller than the door to my dining room/winter plant conservatory.
This year’s mystery isn’t nearly as hard, but it is intriguing. On one of our shopping trips, my daughter picked up a pot containing a low-growing plant with small, double flowers. The five outer petals of each flower were yellow, and the many tiny petals that clustered in the center were red. The specimen had a spreading growth habit and the leaves were fleshy, like those on succulent plants. The label on the shelf behind all the pots of yellow and red flowers read “purslane”. I was in the middle of my own plant binge and didn’t notice until later that our particular pot had no plant tag.
If you live in a climate where summers are warm, you have probably pulled common purslane or Portulaca oleracea out from between paving stones or flower beds. It is a relative of Portulaca grandiflora, generally sold as portulaca or moss rose. Like its ornamental cousin, common purslane is a low, spreading plant with small fleshy leaves and the ability to sprout minute yellow flowers if you give it the time to do so. Common purslane is edible and even nutritious, though I happen to think that it’s better off nourishing the compost pile than nourishing my family. My gardener’s instincts tell me that eating purslane would only encourage it to take over more real estate in my garden. I have better uses for the same limited acreage.
Our ornamental purslane was clearly a cut above the weedy type, but the resemblance was obvious. We made a return trip to the garden center to look at a plant tag from an identical specimen. It was labeled ‘Cinderella’. While we were perusing the plant pallets, we also picked up another purslane labeled ‘Rio Rose’. My research efforts started as soon as I got home.
What I found was confusion among catalog and online sources. Both of our ornamental purslanes were developed by Ball Horticultural, an industry giant. ‘Cinderella’, the double yellow and red-flowered variety, has a sibling, the yellow-flowered, ‘Sleeping Beauty’. Presumably later additions to this series will also have fairy tale names. The Ball website gave the botanical name as “Portulaca grandiflora”, the same name used for the common moss rose. However, it also referred to the plants as purslane, which they do not do for the “regular” moss roses. My daughter’s ‘Rio Scarlet’ is part of a five-color series, with series members featuring yellow, orange, rose or apricot single flowers. Ball calls these purslanes, but uses the same Latin name as the common weedy variety, Portulaca oleracea. Various catalog vendors refer to the Rio series as Portulaca grandiflora and one called them “portulaca hybrids”. Confusion obviously reigns, even among the professionals.
The fact is that both the ‘Rio’ series purslanes and the specimens with fairy tale names have similar, but different leaves and stems from the “regular” moss roses or Portulaca grandiflora. The purslanes’ leaves are larger and flatter and the stems are a bit thicker. Moss roses have larger flowers than those of ‘Cinderella,” but they are about the same size as those in the ‘Rio’series.
Since I couldn’t find a definitive answer online, I went to the source and e-mailed Ball Horticultural, asking about whether the plants in question are grandiflora/oleracea hybrids or simply selectively bred varieties from one species or the other. As yet no answer has come through, but I will keep you posted.
No matter what you call these ornamental purslanes, they are all members of the larger portulaca family and share the virtues of the old-fashioned moss roses. The colors are bright and clear and though the flowers only last for one day apiece, new ones replace them immediately. They are extremely drought tolerant and like lean soil. I assume that like the moss roses, they are easy to grow from seed. If they are hybrids, they may not have the promiscuous self-seeding natures of the moss roses, which can be a plus or a minus, depending on your perspective.
Portulacas of any type make great edging plants and container subjects.. At this point in the year, you may want to purchase them in cell packs at the garden center, so you can have immediate color.
When I meet a new plant, I like to know something about its family before I form a lasting relationship. Other gardeners are a lot more casual and have flings with colorful annuals based on nothing more than flashy good looks. Fortunately, portulacas can handle either scenario.