Kingdom Plantae Family Aizoaceae Scientific name Tetragonia decumbens | Order Caryophyllales Genus Tetragonia Rank Species | |
Similar Tetragonia, Arctotheca populifolia, Scaevola crassifolia, Tetragonia implexicoma, Chenopodium baccatum | ||
Tetragonia decumbens (dune spinach or sea spinach) is a coastal shrub, native to southern Africa.
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Description
It grows as a trailing undershrub with thick, pale, furry stems, and thick, oval leaves one to six centimetres line and five to thirty millimetres wide. Flowers occur in clusters of three to five, and comprise four light yellow perianth segments surrounding a centre of many stamens.
Taxonomy
It was first described and named by Philip Miller in 1768. In 1862 the name T. zeyheri was published by Eduard Fenzl, but this has since been determined to be a synonym of T. decumbens.
Distribution and habitat
Native to southern Africa, it grows on coastal and estuarine sand dunes. The plant is edible and is a local delicacy in its native southern Africa, where it is known as "dune spinach".
It is naturalised in Australia, where it is known as "sea spinach", and occurs in Western Australia, South Australia and New South Wales. The New South Wales specimens were long misidentified as T. nigrescens. It was also formerly naturalised in Victoria, but it is now extinct there.