Plant notes: New Zealand spinach/warragul greens
Published in
3 min readSep 4, 2022
Common name
- New Zealand spinach
- warragul greens
- Botany Bay spinach.
‘Warragul’ is reported to be a Dharug Aboriginal word describing something as wild.
Botanic name
Tetragonia tetragonioides.
Family
Aizoaceae.
Centre of diversity
Australia, New Zealand, East Asia.
Natural habitat
- commonly found in coastal ecosystems, sand dunes behind beaches and on riverine estuaries
- occurs in tropical, warm temperate, cool temperate climates.
Growth form
- sprawling, perennial, leafy groundcover
- thick leaves lanceolate to ovate in shape 1–3cm long, 3–11mm wide
- tiny yellow flowers.
Grows in sandy soils in full sun or light shade.
Uses
- food
- groundcover.
Useful part
- leaf and soft part of the stem; cook as a vegetable (see cautions below).
Reproduction
- seed (small, hard, black)
- cuttings.
Notes
- cultivated or wild-harvested
- may show less-vigorous growth in the cool season
- grown in a number of countries and has been commercially cropped in Europe
- one of the self-seeding spontaneous species found in our urban ecologies and behind beaches.
Cautions
Blanch or cook before eating to break down crystals of oxalic acid that can cause irritation.
Uses in food garden design
- grow as a vegetable
- tolerates full sun, partial shade
- suitable for sandy soils
- edible, perennial groundcover; productivity varies with season in warm and cool temperate climates
- requires little by way of maintenance
- the succulent, edible, juicy leaves store moisture, making the plant suitable for cultivation in hot climates
- ground layer in forest garden
- use to stabilise soils, reduce the erosive impact of heavy rain, shade soils to retain soil moisture and reduce high summer soil temperatures.
Ethnobotanical uses
- records are sparse on Australian Aboriginal use
- used in cooking by Maori people of Aotearoa/New Zealand.
Historic uses
- reportedly used by Captain James Cook’s crew to combat scurvy on arrival at Botany Bay, Australia, in 1770; Cook is said to have had the plant pickled and taken on his voyage to feed the crew as a precaution against scurvy, a disorder due of vitamin C deficiency that was common among long duration sea voyagers
- Cook’s expedition botanist, Joseph Banks, took seeds of Tetragonia back to Kew Gardens in London
- used as a spinach substitute since early European colonisation in Australia.
More plant notes in Permaculture Journal…
