Volunteer vine in a pot. Thick red stem.The plant has had buds on it for a while and my sweetie has been eagerly waiting for them to open up. Today he looked more closely and realized the blooms are open. They are TINY. How tiny?
Check out this photo. This is the bloom stalk next to a standard toothpick.
Here is a closer look at the teeny tiny little flowers.
And here is a picture of one on the plant. The bloom stalks come off the main vine just like a leaf would, rather than at the end of a stalk.He's been trying to key it out with his magnifying lenses and online botanical keys but it's very slow going. I'm posting the photos here in hopes that one of my readers can identify this flower and vine.
UPDATE: Thanks to an anonymous comment, this plant has been identified as "Red Malabar Spinach" or Basella rubra. It's not a spinach like the ones in the grocery store, but it is edible. The purple berries can even be used to color food. I'm going to harvest a few leaves to add to our salad tonight.
6 comments:
I don't know WHAT it is, but it certainly isn't morning glory.
It's really pretty!
Indeed, not a morning glory... but no idea what it is. You can send a pic to your local master gardeners and see if they know.
It looks like the warm weather spinach called malabar spinach. I grew it this summer.
I've no idea, but if no-one knows there's a group on Flickr called "ID_Please" where you can post photos and people will ID them for you.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/idplease/
Hope the link is useful :-)
Anonymous - THANK YOU! That's it. Now that he looks in his collection of seeds, my sweetie finds he does have a packet labeled "red malabar spinach". So glad to know we can eat this thing not just admire its growth rate and flowers.
We like malabar spinach in stirfry.
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