A rather small family, mostly American; herbs, usually with thick,
succulent leaves and stems, with flowers opening only in sunlight. They
usually have only two sepals, but the petals number from two to five
or more; the stamens are sometimes numerous, but when they are of the
same number as the petals they are opposite them; the one-celled ovary
is superior, becoming a many-seeded capsule. Pusley, or Purslane, is
one of the commonest garden weeds; everybody knows how difficult it
is to keep the spreading rosettes out of gravel walks, and we are all
familiar with the gaudy, ephemeral flowers of the cultivated Portulaca.
The Purslane-tree, or Spek-boom, of South Africa is often the principal
food of elephants and its foliage gives the characteristic coloring to
the landscape.
There are several kinds of Montia, closely related to Claytonia,
mostly natives of North America, rather succulent plants, very smooth
and often with a "bloom." The flowers are white or pinkish, with two
sepals; the five petals, equal or somewhat unequal, separate or more
or less united at base; the stamens five or three; the style branches
three; the capsule with three valves and one to three, shiny, black
seeds, which when ripe are shot out of the capsule by the elastic
closing of the valves.
[Sidenote: =Miner's Lettuce=
_Móntia parviflòra_
=White
Spring, summer
West, except Ariz.=]
The Indians gather these pretty succulent little plants for salad and
indeed the tender, bright-green leaves look as if they would taste very
nice. They grow in a loose bunch, with several stems, a few inches to a
foot high. The root-leaves have long leaf-stalks and vary very much in
size and shape, the earliest being long and narrow, like little green
tongues, but the later ones oval, round and kidney-shaped, and they
vary also in tint, in dry places being sometimes a dull yellowish-pink.
The stem-leaves are quite odd, for a single pair have united around
the stem and become a circular or somewhat two-lobed disk, one or two
inches broad, the stalk piercing right through its center. This leaf
forms a pretty, shallow saucer, with a small, loose cluster of tiny
flowers, on slender flower-stalks, springing from the middle. This is
common everywhere in orchards or vineyards, and in shady places in
the foothills and canyons, and has long been cultivated in England
for salad. It is also called Indian Lettuce and Squaw Cabbage. _M.
perfoliàta_ is similar.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: Miner's Lettuce--Montia parviflora.]
[Sidenote: =Spring Beauty=
_Móntia parvifòlia_
=White and pink
Spring
Northwest=]
This charming little flower resembles the Spring Beauty of the East,
_Claytonia Virginica_, and blooms in late spring, among the ferns and
wet grasses near the Yosemite waterfalls and in similar places. The
white flowers, about three-quarters of an inch across, are often tinged
with pink and the five stamens are violet. The tender stems, about
eight inches tall, are weak and almost trailing and the pale-green
leaves are smooth, the lower ones slightly thick and succulent, with
little bulblets in the axils, which drop off in drying; the capsule
mostly has only one seed.
There are several kinds of Claytonia, resembling Montia.
[Sidenote: =Spring Beauty=
_Claytònia lanceolàta_
=Pink and white
Spring
Northwest, Cal., Nev., and Utah=]
A pretty little plant, three or four inches high, with a juicy, reddish
stem and thickish, bluish-green, juicy leaves, the root-leaf narrow,
the two stem-leaves broader. The flowers, over half an inch across, are
white, tinged and delicately veined with pink, with a little yellow at
the base of the petals; the pistil and stamens pink; the two sepals
yellowish-green. This grows on moist mountain slopes, up to an altitude
of nine thousand feet, sometimes at the edge of the snow, is pretty and
delicate and also resembles the eastern Spring Beauty.
[Illustration: Spring Beauties
Claytonia lanceolata.