Scientific Name
Other Names
Life Form
Family
Food - The leaves are cooked with potatoes and groundnuts. The food is slimy, but is well liked because it has a good smell.In India it is used as a famine vegetable. Medicine - The crushed seeds are cooked and eaten as a remedy fort bowel complaints.
Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan
Dry tropical biome,elevation 2200m.
Annual herb.
Prostrate, densely branched annual herb. Stems branched from the base with numerous branches.
Lance-like or elliptic, 1.0-3.0 cm long by 0.1-0.4 cm wide, stalkless, with entire margins (smooth edges).
Pink, clustered in groups of 1-5 in the leaf axils. Flower stalks 0.5 mm long at flowering, usually enclosed by ochreae. Flowers sunken between ochrea or hardly protruding, 1-2 mm across, nearly stalkless. 5 tepals, 1.5-3 mm long by 0.5-1.0 mm wide, inverted lance-shaped to lance-shaped. Unequal tepals, with outer ones slightly longer and pointed, and inner ones blunter.
Nuts 1.0-1.75 mm long, circular to ovate, shiny, black, and hairless.
Flowering: May-October.