PURSLANE FAMILY PORTULACACEAE 
COMMON PURSLANE 
Portulaca oleracea L. 
This naturalized European plant is found in fields and 
waste places nearly throughout the continent except in the far 
north. It is a useful salad plant and is relished also by sheep and 
pigs, rabbits, squirrels and woodchucks. It is 
sometimes called Pussley and in some locali- 
ties where it is a weed 
the expression has 
arisen, ‘“Meaner than 
Pussley.”’ 
The Purslane does 
not grow upright but 
spreads over the soil, 
freely branching from 
a deep central root. As 
an annual it is easily 
destroyed by cultiva- 
tion, but it produces 
5 immense quantities of seed and on this account, 
ic plus its high resistance to drouth, is very per- 
C sistent. If pulled up the plant wilts slowly; and 
if some of its roots are covered with soil before it 
is completely wilted, it will start growing again. 
The yellow flowers, produced all summer, are small but quite 
pretty, and they open in sunshine for only a few hours in the 
morning. There are only 2 sepals, grown together at the base and 
partly attached to the ovary. The 5 yellow petals and 7 or more 
stamens are attached to the calyx and usually fall off shortly. 
The style is deeply 4-6-cleft. The fruit is a capsule containing a 
very large number of small seeds. 
The Prairie Talinum, Talinum teretifolium Pursh, and the Small- 
flowered Talinum, 7. rugospermum Holzinger, the 2 species of this 
genus found in Illinois, grow together in sandy, gravelly or rocky 
barrens and are so much alike as to require close inspection for iden- 
tification. They are small, fleshy and smooth perennials with many 
short, linear, cylindric leaves clustered at the base of the stem. 
The rosy or pinkish flowers, in cymes on scapes, are about one-half 
inch in diameter, with 5 petals and 2 sepals that soon drop off. The 
pedicels are bracted. T. teretifolium is distinguished by its oblong 
anthers and smooth seeds; T. rugospermum has spherical anthers 
and roughened seeds. 
90 
