Purslane: Weeds, Food, and the Politics and Ethics of Nomenclature

THINKING ABOUT WEEDS, READING ABOUT WEEDS, DIGGING ABOUT WEEDS
Now that I've been gardening more, I've also been reading a ton online about plants and gardening.

Today I was reading more about weeds, which I've been thinking about a lot lately, as I become more familiar with the plants native to Michigan, the ones that are invasive, and the ones that are introduced but are not considered problematic.

WEED IDENTIFICATION RESOURCES: IMAGE GALLERIES, DATABASES
One thing I've been exploring a lot is the various weed databases that are around. Rutgers University has a really handy weed gallery with thumbnail photographs of the plants, helpful if you aren't as familiar with botany as some databases require the researcher to be. (The Illinois Council on Food and Agricultural Research weed identification tool, for example, though it is also very useful, asks you to specify the characteristics of a number of plant features to conclude what your weed is, which may overwhelm the neophyte gardener.) For Michigan, there's also a common weed seedlings gallery, which is, interestingly, much more comprehensive than the noxious and restricted weeds list for Michigan. (Ergonica will help you find your way to a similar list for your region, if you aren't local to MI.)

THINKING MORE IN-DEPTH ABOUT WEEDS
Today I came upon this fabulously interesting reading on weeds: course notes from a weed science course taught by Dr. Alan York at North Carolina State University. Although from an anthropological perspective, the idea of a plant "interfering with human activities" calls for some deconstruction and consideration, what's really great about the information he presents is that he deals in much more specific terms about the particular problems weeds pose to human populations than most sources I've come upon: "health hazards," "water management," "safety issues," etc. His detailed, quantified explanations of the reduced crop output of crops given particular levels of weed interference are particularly helpful for understanding the problem of weeds from his perspective.

THREATS TO BIODIVERSITY
Similarly, as someone generally concerned about the diversity of life on the planet, and with the conservation of (relatively) uncultivated land and its species, I'm chilled when I hear the Michigan State University's Invasive Species Initiative has to say about garlic mustard: "Garlic mustard is an exotic invasive plant from Europe that invades woodland habitats in North America and impacts forest biodiversity. In some woodlands, dense stands of garlic mustard in the spring threaten showy spring blooming ephemerals like spring beauty, trilliums and trout lilies. Other research points toward potentially negative impacts on timber species and forest health. Many land managers consider it to be one of the most potentially harmful and difficult to control invasive plants in the region." (See more on the Garlic Mustard Initiative, including photos, here.)

PURSLANE: THE PROBLEM OF CULTURE
But, to get back to what I mean about the deconstruction needed in thinking about weeds "interfering with human activities" (in Alan York's language), consider the example of purslane. (Thanks very much to Scrumptious, my dear friend who blogs about her CSA adventures in San Francisco, for pointing out this problem to me!) Purslane is called a "severe weed pest in vegetable crops and newly seeded turf" by the Rutgers University Agricultural Experiment Station. It gets a similar rap from most folks in the American mainstream. Yet, according to the organization Annadana, it was cultivated over 4000 years ago, and has been eaten for at least 1000 years by people in the Southwestern area of the United States. It's used by healers in the Andes, was used by Mayans in the Yucatan, and is grown as a vegetable in Africa. The Australian Naturopathic Network indicates it has been used also by Australian Aborigines, peoples in India and the Middle East.

As Rosemary Barron writes for the Weston A. Price Foundation for Wise Traditions in Food, Farming, and the Healing Arts, "the FDA lists purslane as a pervasive weed (the 7th worst, worldwide) but to those of us who love its earthy, slightly acidic flavor and crisp, succulent stems and leaves, the word ‘weed’ hardly seems fair." She explains further, "Medieval herbals describe purslane as ‘cold,’ meaning that it was considered a cure for a ‘burning’ (or malfunctioning) heart and liver. Greeks call it a ‘blood-cleansing’ herb. In Mexico, purslane is considered good for diabetics. Recent research has confirmed that purslane is one of the best vegetable sources of omega-3 fatty acids, as well as carotenes and vitamin C."

The CSA folks and naturopaths are clued into the human benefits of this plant. It's gotten the attention of medical researchers as well as the New York Times food and dining section. So why does the FDA still classify it as a weed? What exactly are the human activities with which it's interfering? Stretching green lawns in front of our domiciles that offer nothing to humans or beneficial animals in the way of foodstuffs?

Moreover, why does the American Heart Association not mention purslane anywhere in its omega-3 recommendations? Given the rising cost of food and devastating environmental problems leading to concerns about transportation of food, it should be much more widely publicized that the plant most Americans are trying to weed out of their lawns could actually help save their lives by reducing their risk of coronary heart disease, without paying a single penny to a pharmaceutical company.

Promoting the home cultivation and consumption of this omega-3-rich vegetable could also circumvent the problem that the recommendations for twice-a-week fish consumption, if it actually could be afforded financially by everyone in the population (a BIG if in a society -not to mention a world- with such great wealth disparities as ours has), would so much further contribute to overfishing that it would destroy the world's fisheries.

People. It's time to think about sustainability seriously, and not to treat it as something outside the purview of health sciences. We need to think seriously about how we live, if we want to continue to do it on this planet.


SOME RELEVANT HEALTH RESEARCH:
Ezekwe, Michael O., Thomas R. Omara-Alwala, Tadesse Membrahtu. "Nutritive characterization of purslane accessions as influenced by planting date." Plant Foods for Human Nutrition. Sept 1999 v53 i3 p183(9).

Guil-Guerrero, Jose L., and Ignacio Rodriguez-Garcia. "Lipids classes, fatty acids and carotenes of the leaves of six edible wild plants." European Food Research and Technology A 209.5 (Sept 1999): 313(4).

Purslane eyed as rich food source - US weed has beneficial nutrients
Agricultural Research, Dec, 1992, by Sean Adams

Simopoulos AP. "The omega-6/omega-3 fatty acid ratio, genetic variation, and cardiovascular disease" ASIA PACIFIC JOURNAL OF CLINICAL NUTRITION. 2008;17 Sup.1:131-134.
Simopoulos AP, Norman HA, Gillaspy JE, Duke JA. Common purslane: A source of omega-3 fatty acids and antioxidants. J Am College Nutr. 1992;11:374-382.

Simopoulos AP, Norman HA, Gillaspy JE. Purslane in human nutrition and its potential for world agriculture. World Rev Nutr Diet. 1995;77:47-74.

Simopoulos AP, Salem N Jr. Purslane: a terrestrial source of omega-3 fatty acids. N Engl J Med. 1986;315:833.

Simopoulos AP, Gopalan C (Eds). Plants in Human Health and Nutrition Policy. World Rev Nutr Diet, Basel: Karger, vol. 91, 2003.

Zeghichi S, Kallithrka S, Simopoulos AP, Kypriotakis Z. Nutritional composition of selected wild plants in the diet of Crete. World Rev Nutr Diet. 2003;91:22-40.

Simopoulos AP. Omega-3 fatty acids in wild plants, seeds and nuts. Asia Pac J Clin Nutr. 2002;11(S6):S163-S173.

Simopoulos AP. Omega-3 fatty acids and antioxidants in edible wild plants. Biol Res. 2004;37:263-277.

I have questions, I have answers.

What would I do without the internet? It's such an integral part of my life. I have so many questions. It has so many answers. Like this morning, in the midst of my preparations for a 3-week cleanse and my course planning for my tutoring job (one of the 4 jobs I've got now), my curiosity and work bring me these directions:

How do I make Turkish coffee? Why, by boiling water in an ibrik and following these simple directions, naturally. (Coffee with cardamom and a little brown sugar is so much nicer than plain when you're drinking it without any cream or milk, and I prefer to keep the spices out of my Moka [where I usually make my coffee] to avoid always having to drink flavored coffee.)*

What are The Chronicles of Prydain about, and would it be appropriate reading for my challenging literature & ESL class of 11-year-old Korean girls, once we've finished Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone? Hmm. Maybe, maybe not.

How can I teach that same class about the Vietnam War in a way they'll understand and get something out of it? They had many questions about it as I tried to explain "hippies" and the context for The Bridge to Terabithia. I'm sure Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried would be too sexually sophisticated, Michael Herr's Dispatches too full of vulgarities for this group, who titter at the word "damn" or the word "sex," even in the sense of the distinction between male and female. Yet they're SO BORED by almost everything I bring in, except Harry Potter. I came upon this wonderful article by Peter Filene from 1999 about teaching Vietnam to children of Vietnam war vets & protestors (unfortunately, available in full only through institutional access through JSTOR). But for 11-year-old girls raised with a foot in Korea and a foot in the United States, Filene's observation that for his students, "the war has very different meanings: it is both further away and closer" is true in rather a different sense. Maybe I can take a look at Wanda Miller's book, Teaching U.S. History Through Children's Literature: Post-World War II (Through Children's Literature) to find some more ideas. And maybe the book Teaching U.S. history as mystery by David Gerwin and Jack Zevin may help, too, since it sounds good and sounds like it's got a case-study on Vietnam. Of course, since I'm not paid for prep and this is far from being my primary job, the question remains too exactly how much I can put into this . . .

Could I teach Hesse's The Journey to the East to my group of soon-to-be 6th graders? Am I reaching too far in wanting to teach them Hesse and Thoreau in my anthropologically driven English literature course on nature and survival narratives? (So far we've read Jack London's "To Build a Fire", Stephen Crane's "The Open Boat", and Athabaskan (Alaska native) writer Velma Wallis's Two Old Women, and next up is Jon Krakauer's article "Death of an Innocent" [a shorter version of the story on which his book, and the recently released film "Into the Wild" is based] Maori writer Witi Ihimaera's The Whale Rider.)

Would a nectarine tree grow in my yard? Hmm, probably not to be hardy or fruiting from a stone of fruit from COSTCO grown who-knows-where. If I spent a bit on a tree, a special cultivar called "Flamin' Fury", probably so.

What should I do with my cabbage from the Howell farmer's market? Why, make raw sauerkraut and linguine with sauteed bacon, onion, cabbage, coarse sea salt, fresh-ground pepper and nutmeg, and garden-fresh tarragon and thyme, inspired by Katrina of Daily Unadventures in Cooking, of course. This is cheating a bit, because I actually found these recipes in the past and have been meaning to make them for some time. Now if only I had a 50-gallon barrel for sauerkraut, instead of the modest brown ceramic crock I found at a garage sale and bought for this purpose (but instead have been using for a year to hold my alliums and potatoes)!

Just when am I going to stop playing and start working on my archaeology paper? Oops, that's one the internet can't answer for me. Perhaps I should go explore the question off-line.

*By the way, though, that recipe above doesn't call for NEARLY enough coffee. Very weak for a Turkish coffee, and I don't think there was even a full cup of water in my pot, since my ibrik is very small, like this one. I think THIS RECIPE looks better; I'm going to try it now, since the food coma is setting in since I ate all the pasta. Mmmm. What a lovely lazy day at home.

Week 2: A long day's work in the garden.

I'm being rewarded with my first big bloom on a plant I bought with no sign of flowering: a deep orange-colored flower on the Maltese Cross I planted (above).

The other plants in that bed are doing fine, growing slowly but surely.

At the end there (above), you can see the cilantro and parsley are holding their own. I think they're not liking the hot days we've had intermittently, but I spread the bed with a bit of compost and manure and cocoa bean mulch after taking these photos, so I hope that will help all the plants along.

In the front of that bed, the phlox and zinnia seeds I planted seem to slowly be peeking out:

Also pretty happy is the hydrangea plant, and beside it, the butterfly bush, below:

The purslane bed on the right is doing splendidly:

The one on the left (below) is still growing up from tiny little plants.

In that same bed, the mint is much happier:

Behind them, the eggplants are growing slowly. I saw a little purple bloom on one of them, but sadly I knocked it off after I took the photo while I was watering.

The tomatoes seem to be growing slowly. I hope the compost/manure mix and mulch will help them a lot too.

The herbs generally seem pretty happy.

The only one that really doesn't look too happy is the lemon verbena, there between the basil plants and the variegated sage above. I'm not sure what is going wrong there.

The pineapple sage and horehound above seem to be growing steadily, and the chocolate mint is thriving.

My fight with the "lawn demons" continues, though. Since they weedwhacked the best bed of mint I had, below, I surrounded that one too with a ring of rocks (below). I would have done before, but they got to me before I had a chance to, while I was in Ann Arbor at the end of the long power outage. I'm mad, but I know that the mint will come back, probably even hardier than before.


I'm taking similar precautions along the border, where I've also planted mint. Now I'm experimenting with other kinds of materials, including tree branches and broken pottery, since I'm not sure I have quite enough stones to cover every boundary clearly.

Despite their best efforts, the mint still is growing nicely there, and I don't think it will be long before I really do have a nice (edible) border covering that ugly PVC.

That other variety of mint is also thriving in the little bed at the front of the walkway:


The walkway is also improving in appearance as the purslane and that other succulent fill in a bit. Some are still pretty small, but I expect that they'll grow in time. Their older siblings are already looking nice and bushy.


And despite my having thinned it considerably, the purslane is still growing in in patches of grass where the sod is thin.

In the garden plot, I know I have some more work I ought to be doing. Things are dry, and I know they want more organic material to thrive. It's hard, though, because the mosquitoes have been so thick over there, and every time I start working the soil, they're on top of me and I have a couple dozen new bites almost immediately. The peas, especially, have been suffering.


Still, there's been some growth. The okra plants below are shooting up.

And the vines of the squash and melon plants are moving along.

The melon plants have begun to flower.

The beans are growing (below), though I think a rabbit or other critter may have gotten to one of them.

After taking the photos, I did a ton more work, adding compost/manure almost everywhere, working it into the soil where I could, and adding topsoil in some places too, and cocoa bean mulch in some. I also did a BUNCH more planting, including Oriental poppy, larkspur, sunflower, more zinnia, marigold, black-eyed Susan, purple cornflower, snapdragon, lettuce, spinach, carrot, radish, zucchini, redbud, strawberry, sweetpeas, and mixed wildflowers.

I'll update ASAP to show how things are getting along.