What is common purslane?

Common purslane identification comes down to one word: succulent. It’s a low, mat-forming summer annual with thick, rubbery reddish stems and fleshy little leaves that look like a miniature jade plant. It thrives in exactly the kind of hot, dry, bare soil that most other plants struggle with.

Purslane has been around North America for a very long time and is grown as a vegetable in many parts of the world. In your yard, though, it’s a fast-spreading weed of gardens, new lawns and pavement cracks. A single plant can make a huge number of tiny seeds, and those seeds can last in the soil for years.

Common purslane identification: what to look for

• Growth habit: stems radiate out from a single root and lie flat, forming a mat that can reach a foot or two across.
• Stems: smooth, thick and juicy, often red or purplish, especially in full sun.
• Leaves: about a half inch to an inch long, thick, shiny and rounded at the tip like a paddle. They tend to cluster at the ends of the stems.
• Sap: break a stem and the sap is clear and watery. That’s the quickest way to tell it from spurge, which bleeds milky white.
• Flowers: small, yellow and five-petaled, hidden among the leaf clusters. They open for a few hours on sunny mornings and close by afternoon, from midsummer until frost.
• Seed: tiny capsules split around the middle so the top lifts off like a lid, scattering very small black seeds.

Where it grows in Pennsylvania

Purslane is a warm-season plant. It doesn’t germinate until the soil has really warmed up, usually by late May or June in central PA, then grows fastest during the hottest weeks of July and August.

Look for it in vegetable gardens, freshly seeded or patchy lawns, the gap between a driveway and the grass, joints in patios and sidewalks, and mulched beds that have thinned out. Anywhere soil is exposed to full sun, it can take hold.

Common purslane look-alikes

• Spotted spurge grows the same flat way in the same places, but its stems are thin and wiry, its leaves are flat and often marked with a red spot, and it has milky sap.
• Prostrate knotweed forms tough mats in compacted soil, but it has wiry stems with papery sheaths at each joint and small, flat leaves.
• Moss rose is a garden relative with needle-like leaves and big, colorful flowers. If it seeded in from a planter, it’s not a problem weed.

How to get rid of common purslane

Pull or hoe early. Purslane has a shallow root, so young plants pull out easily. The trick is to get it before it flowers, because seed can mature quickly. Here’s the part people miss: purslane stores so much water that pulled plants left lying on the soil can stay alive for days, re-root, and even ripen their seed. Bag pulled plants or put them on a hot, dry surface away from the garden rather than leaving them in the bed or tossing them on a backyard compost pile.

Cultural control:

• Mulch garden beds 2 to 3 inches deep so seeds in the soil don’t get the light they need.
• In vegetable gardens, use straw, paper or a cover crop on open ground between crops.
• Keep lawns thick and mowed at 3 to 4 inches, and seed thin spots in early fall so there’s no bare soil next summer.
• Seal paver and patio joints properly. Joints filled with polymeric sand give seeds far less room to sprout than loose sand.

Herbicides: in lawns and established ornamental beds, preemergence herbicides such as prodiamine, dithiopyr or pendimethalin, applied in spring before the soil warms, help stop seedlings. Once plants are established, selective lawn broadleaf combinations that include ingredients like 2,4-D, dicamba, triclopyr or fluroxypyr work best on young plants; big, waxy plants are harder to kill. Don’t use lawn products in a vegetable garden unless the label specifically allows it. Read and follow the product label every time; the label is the law. Check that the product is labeled for your site, since lawn, bed and vegetable-garden products are not interchangeable. Applying herbicide for hire in Pennsylvania requires a PA Department of Agriculture pesticide applicator certification, so larger jobs belong with a licensed lawn-care or vegetation-management company.

Keeping it from coming back

Because the seed bank can last for years, plan on a few summers of steady pulling. Every plant you remove before it seeds means fewer next year.

Avoid tilling more than you need to, since every pass brings buried seed back up to the surface. Keep soil covered with mulch, crops or turf, and check paver joints and driveway edges each June when the first seedlings appear.

Questions we get about common purslane

Similar weeds

Spotted SpurgeEuphorbia maculataProstrate KnotweedPolygonum aviculareCarpetweedMollugo verticillata