Horse Purslane

Trianthema portulacastrum L.

Sources

37 listed

Best forLooked up by people who meet this plant as a wild pot herb in Indian, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan or West African cooking, or who are offered it as white punarnava, and who want to know which part is eaten, which part is not, and where the cautions sit.

Clinical evidence

Traditional

Real World Significance

51Established historical significance

Breadth 58 Depth 14 Density 70 Convergence 63 Continuity 65

SafetyUse with cautionRated caution, not safe: the root is a recorded purgative and, in Asia, an abortifacient, older leaves are linked to diarrhoea and paralysis, the leaf carries oxalate, and anaphylaxis to the cooked leaf has been documented.

Tradition

AyurvedaFolk medicine

Common preparations

Fresh Leaves Soup herbDried Leaves TeaDecoctionPowderPoultice

In short

Summary of findings for quick reference

Horse purslane is two things at once, and keeping them apart matters more than anything else on this page. It is a fleshy field weed whose young cooked tops make a genuine leafy vegetable, eaten from Ghana and Tanzania to Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Philippines, high in fibre and minerals in laboratory analyses, free to gather and utterly ordinary. It is also a folk medicine whose root is a purgative, recorded in Asia as a means of bringing on menstruation and, in large doses, of ending a pregnancy. Leaf and root are not interchangeable, and any label or recipe that names only the species leaves out the part that matters.

The historical record is broad rather than deep. The plant is native on three continents, and its use is written down in Ayurveda, in Unani and Tamil Siddha practice, in Bengali and Yoruba kitchens, in Tanzanian soups and in Philippine compendia. The traditions converge on two ideas. It is a green you cook, and it is something people reached for when the body held water or the liver felt blocked. What the record lacks is antiquity. The earliest dated document naming the species is Linnaeus's description of 1753, and the earliest dated account of its medicinal use is Whitelaw Ainslie's Materia Indica of 1826.

On the clinical side the picture is simple. No trial in people has tested this plant for anything, and the only study in people describes harm, three men in Sri Lanka with repeated anaphylaxis after eating the cooked leaves. Beyond that there is a substantial rodent literature on the liver, a controlled worming trial in sheep, nutrient analyses and a cell culture screen, and parts of the wound healing literature have been retracted or flagged by their journals. In Europe the plant has no herbal monograph and no authorised health claim. The practical cautions are older leaves, the oxalate in the leaf, allergy, pregnancy and the long running confusion with punarnava.

Clinical evidence ↔ Historical significance

We display two separate evidence categories: clinical evidence from modern trials and historical significance from documented healing tradition. Both are valuable, but they answer different questions.

In every encyclopedia entry we evaluate two distinct categories of evidence. Clinical evidence as used in trials meets a narrower but scientifically essential bar. At the same time, the hundreds of thousands of plant species worldwide have only partially been captured and tested in modern studies.

Alongside the trial picture our researchers compile a comprehensive overview of where and since when a plant has been used across different traditions of natural medicine. When a plant has been used as a medicinal plant in many cultures across many generations, that historical significance deserves to be visible too.

Our position: a truly informative overview emerges only when both categories sit side by side. We communicate transparently what counts as what.

Overview

Horse purslane, Trianthema portulacastrum, is a low, fleshy, mat forming annual of the ice plant family that grows wild through the warm parts of the Americas, Africa, Arabia and monsoon Asia. Farmers know it as one of the most stubborn weeds of maize, cotton, sugarcane and vegetable fields. Cooks know it as something else entirely. The young tops and leaves are gathered, boiled and eaten as a leafy vegetable in Ghana, Cameroon, Tanzania, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Philippines, where the plant answers to names such as gadabani, sharunnai, sarana, olowonjeja and toston.

The plant lives in two worlds at once. As food it is the young, cooked leaf and tender shoot. In folk medicine it is more often the root, and the root is another matter. Indian and Tamil sources give it powdered as a purgative, and compendia record that in Asia it was used to bring on menstruation and, in large doses, to end a pregnancy. None of this has been tested in people. In the European Union the plant has no standing as a herbal medicine and no authorised health claim.

History

The written history of this plant is short, but it is more vivid than its length suggests. Linnaeus described the species in Species Plantarum in 1753. In 1826 Whitelaw Ainslie, a physician late of the medical staff of southern India, published his Materia Indica and in it described sharunnay vayr, the root as it was sold in the bazaars, pale and much wrinkled, bitterish and somewhat nauseous. The Tamil physicians he called Vytians counted it among their purgatives and gave about two teaspoons of the powder twice a day with a little ginger. Ainslie also noted that the leaves were eaten, and that the plant grew in the West Indies as well as in India. No older dated account of the plant as food or medicine has turned up.

The Sanskrit names have caused trouble ever since. Ainslie already gave punarnava as the Sanskrit name of the root, and later Indian lists call the plant shvetapunarnava, white punarnava, which places it right beside Boerhavia diffusa, the punarnava of Ayurvedic practice. Indian pharmacognosy now calls that equation a mistake, but it stuck in the trade. In 1948 a study in the Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association set the stem and leaf characters of the two plants side by side, precisely because dried punarnava was often one plant sold as the other. The confusion has never gone away, and it is still the single most practical thing to know about horse purslane.

Kirtikar and Basu carried Ainslie's note into the twentieth century in their Indian Medicinal Plants of 1918, and the second edition of 1935 added the Ayurvedic picture of a bitter, heating herb for bronchitis, anaemia, inflammations and piles, with the root applied to the eye for corneal ulcers and night blindness, alongside a long list of names that runs from Tagalog toston to the Hausa names recorded in Sokoto. The laboratory came later. In 1979 researchers grew the plant in tissue culture to learn how it makes ecdysterone, an insect moulting hormone, and in the 1990s a group in Calcutta tested its extracts on the poisoned livers of mice and rats. The plant's paper trail therefore runs to two centuries of names and kitchen use, a few decades of laboratory work and not one trial in people.

Mechanism

Chemically the plant is unusual for a leafy vegetable. The best characterised constituent is ecdysterone, a phytoecdysteroid structurally close to the moulting hormone of insects, isolated from the whole plant at roughly a tenth of a gram per kilogram. Alongside it sit the alkaloid trianthemine, the tetraterpenoid trianthenol, first described in 2001 from a chloroform extract, the chromone leptorumol, a C methylflavone, 3 acetylaleuritolic acid and the red betacyanin pigment that colours the stems of the red form. The leaves carry carotene and, important for the kitchen, oxalate. The seeds hold about 12.5 percent fatty oil. Rosette and needle shaped calcium oxalate crystals show up in leaf, stem and root under the microscope, and pharmacognosy texts use them to identify the drug.

Nobody has measured how much of this reaches a person from a plate of greens. Ecdysterone is best documented as an insect hormone. In a laboratory bioassay a hundredth of a microgram, injected into isolated abdomens of housefly larvae, triggered full pupation, and in 1979 researchers grew the plant in tissue culture to study how it makes the compound. The practical interest was pest control, and PROTA lists the ecdysterone as a potential chemosterilant for insects. Nothing links that assay to any effect in people. The oxalate is the one constituent with a plain practical consequence, because oxalate binds calcium in the gut and lowers how much of the plant's own calcium the body can take up. Every other mechanism described for this plant comes from cell culture, test tube chemistry or rodents.

There are no clinical trials of horse purslane in people. Not a small one, not an old one, none. What exists is a rodent literature about the liver, most of it from Calcutta in the late 1990s and from Tamil Nadu in the 2000s. Ethanol extracts of the aerial parts protected mice against liver damage from alcohol and carbon tetrachloride, extracts did the same in rats poisoned with paracetamol and thioacetamide, a leaf extract held its own against the reference drug silymarin in rats given aflatoxin B1, and aqueous, ethanol and chloroform fractions reduced the number and size of liver nodules in rats given the carcinogen diethylnitrosamine. Those are animal models of chemical poisoning, not treatment of liver disease, and the results do not transfer to a person eating a plate of cooked greens. Later rodent work followed the same pattern elsewhere. In 2014 an extract reduced chemically induced mammary tumours in rats, and in 2019 a whole plant water extract reduced pain responses and joint swelling in rodents in a study from Lagos.

The rest of the modern record deserves reading with care. A 2017 rat study on wound healing with a protocatechuic acid rich fraction was retracted by its journal in 2026, and a 2018 paper on zinc oxide nanoparticles made with this plant received an expression of concern in 2023 followed by a correction, so that corner of the wound healing literature should not be leaned on. More solid are the compositional studies. A Nigerian analysis of dried leaf, whole plant and root samples from two local biotypes found 8.6 to 22.7 percent protein, 24 to 50 percent fibre and high levels of iron, zinc and manganese, and a Bangladeshi survey found more dietary fibre in this plant than in any of the four other local greens it tested. That is the real reason people eat it. The same Nigerian team found that ethanol extracts halved HIV-1 replication in cell culture, but only at concentrations several hundred thousand times higher than the reference drug zidovudine, an in vitro observation and nothing more. Veterinary work in Pakistan found that whole plant preparations cut worm egg counts in naturally infected sheep, a little less than a standard wormer, which supports the traditional use in livestock rather than in people.

Evidence

5 Outcomes evaluated. Sorted by grade.

Outcome	Class	Grade	Effect	Studies
Fluid retention and liver complaints in traditional practiceAdults in South Asian, South East Asian and African folk practice	Traditional	D	Traditional use only
Markers of chemically induced liver injury in rodentsMice and rats given alcohol, carbon tetrachloride, paracetamol, thioacetamide, aflatoxin B1 or diethylnitrosamine	Traditional	I	Animal data only	8 studies
Gastrointestinal worm burden in sheepNaturally infected sheep in Punjab, Pakistan	Traditional	D	Veterinary data only	1 study
Use as a cooked leafy vegetableRural households in West Africa, East Africa and South Asia	Traditional	D	Food use	3 studies
Any measured outcome in human trialsNo human trial population exists	Insufficient	I	No human trials

Key studies

The studies that matter.

Case report · 2023
Researchers in Colombo described three adult men who had each had repeated anaphylaxis after eating cooked horse purslane leaves, two of them with cardiac arrest, and confirmed the sensitisation with skin prick tests. Immunoblotting found an allergenic protein of about 97 kilodaltons in both raw and boiled leaves, although only one patient's blood reacted to it. Three cases cannot show how common the allergy is, but they do show that cooking does not make the leaf safe for someone who is sensitised. It is the only published study of this plant in people.
Iddagoda J, Gunasekara P, Handunnetti S, Jeewandara C, Karunatilake C, Malavige GN, de Silva R, Dasanayake D. Identification of allergens in Artocarpus heterophyllus, Moringa oleifera, Trianthema portulacastrum and Syzygium samarangense. Clinical and Molecular Allergy 2023;21(1):6 PMID:37568224
Animal study · 2011
Sheep in Pakistan naturally infected with a mix of gut worms received powdered whole plant or a crude water and methanol extract at 1 to 8 grams per kilogram of body weight, alongside untreated sheep and sheep given the wormer levamisole. At the highest extract dose, worm egg counts in the faeces fell by 85.6 percent by day 15, against 97 percent with levamisole. It is a controlled veterinary trial and the most direct test of any traditional use of this plant, but it was done in sheep, at doses no person would eat.
Hussain A, Khan MN, Iqbal Z, Sajid MS, Khan MK. Anthelmintic activity of Trianthema portulacastrum L. and Musa paradisiaca L. against gastrointestinal nematodes of sheep. Veterinary Parasitology 2011;179(1-3):92-99 PMID:21440370
Animal study · 1996
Mice were poisoned with alcohol and carbon tetrachloride, a standard way of injuring the liver, and given an ethanol extract of the whole plant without its roots at 50, 100 or 150 milligrams per kilogram for three days. The extract brought raised liver enzymes, bilirubin and a marker of oxidative damage back towards normal, and the higher the dose, the stronger the effect. It opened more than a decade of similar rodent studies from Calcutta and Tamil Nadu. All of it is animal data from chemical poisoning models, and none of it has been tested in a person.
Bishayee A, Mandal A, Chatterjee M. Prevention of alcohol-carbon tetrachloride-induced signs of early hepatotoxicity in mice by Trianthema portulacastrum L. Phytomedicine 1996;3(2):155-161 PMID:23194963
Laboratory study · 2024
A Nigerian and South African team analysed dried leaves, roots and whole plants of two Nigerian biotypes with a herbarium voucher. They found 8.6 to 22.7 percent protein, 24 to 50 percent fibre and 194 to 984 milligrams of iron per kilogram, level with or above familiar leafy greens. Ethanol extracts halved HIV-1 replication in cell culture only at 1.2 to 1.8 milligrams per millilitre, several hundred thousand times the concentration of the reference drug zidovudine. The nutrient data support the plant's place in the pot, and the antiviral result stays a laboratory observation.
Jimoh MA, Jimoh MO, Bello M, Raimi IO, Okunlola GO, Mkhwanazi N, Laubscher CP. In vitro anti-HIV, cytotoxicity and nutritional analysis of Trianthema portulacastrum L. (Aizoaceae). BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies 2024;24:35 PMID:38216975

Usage

Forms and preparation

As a vegetable the plant is treated like any tender wild green. Young tops and soft leaves are picked early, since the plant can flower within three to four weeks of coming up, washed well because it grows low in field soil, and boiled or added to soups. In coastal Bangladesh it is one of the everyday greens under its Bengali name gadabani, in Sri Lanka, where it is called sarana, a meal of the cooked leaves runs to 20 grams or more, and in West Africa the young tops go into soups. Cooking matters here for more than texture. In other vegetables boiling moves between 30 and 87 percent of the soluble oxalate into the water, so pouring that water away lowers the load on the plate. In folk medicine the preparations are different and stronger. A decoction of the whole herb was used as a vermifuge and against rheumatism, dried leaf powder was taken in doses of a few grams, the fleshy leaves were laid on wounds as a poultice, and the powdered root, bitter and nauseous, was given as a purgative with a little ginger. These are historical practices recorded in compendia, not instructions, and the root preparations in particular are best left in the history books.

Dosage

There is no official dosage for horse purslane, because no regulator has ever assessed it. What exists is a traditional Ayurvedic reference range recorded in the Indian literature: about two to five grams of leaf powder, or twenty to thirty grams of dried herb for a decoction. That figure is a historical reference point, not a recommendation, and it has never been tested for safety or effect in a controlled setting. Nobody has established a safe upper intake, a safe duration or a safe amount in any specific group of people. For the kitchen the sensible frame is the one that applies to any oxalate bearing wild green. Eat it cooked, eat the young growth, pour the cooking water away, treat it as one vegetable among several rather than a daily staple, and do not move on to the root because a leaf dish caused no trouble. The root is a purgative and belongs to a different discussion entirely.

Special populations

Pregnancy and breastfeeding: avoid. The root is recorded in Asia as an emmenagogue and, in large doses, an abortifacient, and no study separates a culinary amount from a medicinal one in a pregnant person. Children: the plant is eaten by families in its home range, but the warning about older leaves and the oxalate make it a poor choice for small children in a household that has other greens. Anyone who has had calcium oxalate kidney stones should keep it an occasional vegetable, boiled with the water poured away. Anyone with a known plant food allergy should approach it carefully, because allergic reactions up to anaphylaxis after the cooked leaf are documented.

Safety

Safety profile

The first rule with this plant is the plant part rule, and it is not a formality. The young cooked leaf is a vegetable eaten in Africa and Asia. The root is a purgative that older reference works describe as bitter, nauseous and irritant, and in Asia it is given to bring on menstruation and, in large doses, to end a pregnancy. A recipe, a supplier or a supplement that says only Trianthema portulacastrum without naming the part is not telling you what you need to know. The second rule concerns the leaf itself. The standard African and South East Asian compendia state that the plant may cause diarrhoea or paralysis, particularly when older leaves are eaten, that fed as fodder it can do the same to livestock, and that most domestic animals refuse to eat it. The leaf also carries oxalate, which binds calcium in the gut and matters to anyone with a history of calcium oxalate kidney stones. Cooked young growth in ordinary vegetable amounts is the only use with a long, quiet track record. Allergy is real too. Researchers in Colombo described three men with repeated anaphylaxis after eating the cooked leaves, two of them with cardiac arrest, and found an allergenic protein of about 97 kilodaltons in both raw and boiled leaves, so cooking does not remove that risk. Finally, the plant is often sold dried as white punarnava, and dried material from the trade may be the wrong species altogether.

Drug interactions

There is no regulator interaction list for horse purslane, because no regulator has ever assessed it, and no human interaction study has been published. That is an absence of data, not a clean bill. Two general points follow from what the plant is. A preparation that acts as a strong purgative, taken repeatedly, can disturb fluid and salt balance, and that matters for anyone taking diuretics, heart medicines or potassium lowering drugs. A leaf with a meaningful oxalate load is worth mentioning to a doctor if you take calcium or iron supplements, because oxalate reduces how much of those minerals is absorbed from the same meal. Anyone on prescribed medication who is thinking of taking this plant as a remedy rather than eating it as a vegetable should speak to a doctor or pharmacist first.

Contraindications

Pregnancy, at any dose and in any preparation, because the root is recorded in Asia as an emmenagogue and abortifacient and no study defines a safe culinary threshold. Breastfeeding, for the same reason: no data at all exist on transfer or on infant tolerance. A history of calcium oxalate kidney stones, because the leaf carries oxalate, which an Indian review describes as high enough to hinder calcium uptake. Known allergy to this plant or a previous reaction to it. All three documented cases of anaphylaxis followed cooked leaves, so cooking does not make it safe. Any use of the root as a self prescribed purgative, which has no place outside its historical context.

Side effects

From the root and from strong whole herb preparations: cramping, nausea and watery stools, which is simply what a purgative does. From the leaf, especially older leaves and large amounts: diarrhoea and, in the wording of the African and South East Asian compendia, paralysis. No clinical report has described what that paralysis looks like, and the same compendia note that livestock fed the plant can suffer similar effects. From the leaf, raw or cooked, in sensitised people: allergic reactions up to anaphylaxis, documented in three men in Sri Lanka after cooked leaves, two of whom went into cardiac arrest.

Look-alikes

Botany

Family

Aizoaceae

Native regions

Native across the warm tropics and subtropics of the Americas, Africa, Arabia, South Asia, South East Asia and southern China, Introduced and naturalised in Australia, Hawaii, north eastern Brazil and parts of the eastern Mediterranean fringe, Not native anywhere in Europe and not grown as a crop there

Harvest window

Young tops and leaves gathered in the rainy season while the shoots are still soft, before the plant coarsens and sets seed

Habitat

A warm season annual of open, disturbed, fertile ground, found in irrigated fields of maize, cotton, soybean, sugarcane, pearl millet, pulses, potato, onion and vegetables, in river beds, on roadsides and waste places, and often on clay soils near the sea. It is ranked among the most troublesome weeds of tropical farming, which is also why it is abundant and free to gather. Its success is a matter of speed. Seed germinates anywhere between 20 and 45 °C, best at 35 °C, more than half of fresh seed sprouts within four to eight days, and the plant flowers and sets seed only 20 to 30 days after it comes up. It shrugs off many herbicides, its seeds turn up as contaminants in grain, and its extracts hold back the germination of sorghum, pumpkin, aubergine, radish, wheat and several pulses, and even of its own seed. It also harbours the mosaic viruses of tobacco, cucumber, watermelon and aubergine and the tungro viruses of rice. It can be kept down by pulling it before it flowers, or by spraying a conventional herbicide or the fungus Gibbago trianthemae, which works as a living herbicide.

Identification & foraging

A prostrate or trailing annual with forked, largely hairless, succulent stems and swollen nodes, often tinted red. The leaves are opposite and strikingly unequal in each pair, one clearly larger than the other, obovate, fleshy and one to five centimetres long, with the leaf stalk widened at the base into a sheathing pouch. The small pale pink flowers sit singly and almost hidden inside that pouch, with 10 to 25 stamens. The capsule, three to five millimetres long, is also tucked into the pouch and opens by a little beaked lid. Indian sources distinguish two forms, the red lal sabuni, with red stems, leaf margins and flowers, and the green svet sabuni, with green stems and white flowers.

Similar plants and look-alikes

Toxic

Prostrate spurges (Euphorbia prostrata, Euphorbia thymifolia and relatives)

These small prostrate spurges form mats in exactly the same fields, roadsides and irrigation margins, and their stems are often red too, so colour will not separate them. Break a stem. A spurge bleeds white milky latex, horse purslane does not. Spurge latex is a recognised irritant and poison, it can injure the eye badly enough to need surgery, and it has no place in a cooking pot. The leaves give it away as well. A spurge leaf is only a few millimetres long, thin and often finely toothed, while a horse purslane leaf is fleshy, up to five centimetres long and paired with a smaller partner.

Unpleasant

Punarnava (Boerhavia diffusa)

This is the substitution that matters commercially. Boerhavia diffusa is the punarnava of Ayurvedic practice, a perennial of the four o'clock family, Nyctaginaceae, with a thick fleshy root. Horse purslane, sold as white punarnava, belongs to the ice plant family. Dried and cut, the two are hard to tell apart, and a 1948 pharmacognosy study was published specifically to separate them by stem and leaf characters. Fresh, the difference is plain. Boerhavia has thin, softly hairy, rounded leaves that are pale greyish yellow underneath, on long trailing stems, and tiny purple red flowers in small heads on slender stalks. Horse purslane has thick succulent leaves in unequal pairs and flowers hidden in the leaf stalk pouch. The practical problem is simple. You do not get the plant you paid for.

Unpleasant

Common purslane (Portulaca oleracea)

The purslane of European, Turkish and Levantine kitchens is a different plant in a different family, and it is the one most European readers will actually have eaten. Both are prostrate and succulent, which is why the English and German names keep colliding. Portulaca has flat, paddle shaped leaves that sit alternately or almost opposite and are all much the same size, small bright yellow flowers with five petals, and a smooth reddish stem. Horse purslane has strikingly unequal leaf pairs, pale pink flowers buried in a sheathing pouch and no yellow bloom at all. Whatever you know about one of them, do not carry it over to the other, least of all the pregnancy warning that horse purslane's root carries.

Unpleasant

Sea purslane (Sesuvium portulacastrum)

Sea purslane shares the ice plant family and, confusingly, the exact species epithet, so database and literature searches mix the two constantly. The chemistry overlaps too, because ecdysterone has been isolated from Sesuvium as well. It is a sprawling perennial of seashore sand with narrow, fleshy leaves, often rooting at the nodes, and single pink star shaped flowers on short stalks, not hidden in a pouch. It is a common subject of research on salt and heavy metal tolerance. If a study or a supplier says portulacastrum without a genus, check which genus is meant before drawing any conclusion.

FAQs

Which part of horse purslane is eaten, and which part is not?

The food part is the young top and the tender leaf, cooked. Across Ghana, Cameroon, Tanzania, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Philippines it goes into soups and cooked greens. The root is another matter. Reference works describe it as cathartic and stomachic, and record that in Asia it was given to bring on menstruation and, in large doses, to end a pregnancy. The root is a folk medicine, not a vegetable, and the two are never interchangeable.

Can horse purslane be eaten raw?

The food records describe it cooked, boiled as a vegetable or added to soups, and that is how to eat it. There are two good reasons. The leaf carries oxalate, and in other vegetables boiling moves 30 to 87 percent of the soluble oxalate into the water, which is then best poured away. And older leaves are the ones the compendia link with diarrhoea and paralysis, so pick only young tops. Cooking does not help with allergy, though. All three documented cases of anaphylaxis followed cooked leaves.

Is horse purslane the same thing as punarnava?

No. Punarnava in Ayurvedic usage is Boerhavia diffusa, a plant from a different family. Horse purslane is listed in Sanskrit sources as shvetapunarnava, white punarnava, an equation Indian pharmacognosy calls mistaken, and because the two look alike when dried they have been substituted for each other in the trade since at least the 1940s. A 1948 pharmacognosy study was written specifically to tell their stems and leaves apart. If you have been sold punarnava and want Boerhavia diffusa, ask which botanical name is on the label.

Is it the same as the purslane sold in European markets?

No. The purslane of European and Middle Eastern kitchens is Portulaca oleracea, in the family Portulacaceae. Horse purslane is Trianthema portulacastrum, in the ice plant family Aizoaceae. Both are prostrate and succulent, which is why the English names overlap, but they are not close relatives and they do not carry the same cautions. Sea purslane, Sesuvium portulacastrum, is a third plant again and shares only the species epithet with horse purslane.

Can it be eaten in pregnancy?

Not as a medicine, and this entry would not suggest it as a food either. Compendia record that in Asia the root is given to bring on menstruation and, in large doses, to end a pregnancy. No dose study separates a safe kitchen amount from an unsafe medicinal one in a pregnant person, so the sensible line is to avoid the plant in pregnancy and while breastfeeding and to choose a green with a clear record instead.

Does it do anything for the liver?

Traditional practice in India, the Philippines, Thailand and parts of Africa used the root for what older texts call obstructions of the liver, and eight rodent studies found that extracts blunted chemically induced liver injury. None of that has been tested in a person, so there is no basis for using the plant to protect or treat a human liver. Liver symptoms belong with a doctor.

What is its regulatory status in Europe?

In Europe horse purslane is simply an unassessed wild plant from elsewhere. No European herbal monograph covers it, and no health claim naming it is authorised in the European Union. The formal quality standards for the drug are Indian, among them the one the Indian Council of Medical Research published in 2003.

References

37 sources.

Shivhare MK, Singour PK, Chaurasiya PK, Pawar RS. Trianthema portulacastrum Linn. (Bishkhapra). Pharmacognosy Reviews 2012;6(12):132-140. 2012. PMID:23055639
Iddagoda J, Gunasekara P, Handunnetti S, Jeewandara C, Karunatilake C, Malavige GN, de Silva R, Dasanayake D. Identification of allergens in Artocarpus heterophyllus, Moringa oleifera, Trianthema portulacastrum and Syzygium samarangense. Clinical and Molecular Allergy 2023;21(1):6. 2023. PMID:37568224
Hussain A, Khan MN, Iqbal Z, Sajid MS, Khan MK. Anthelmintic activity of Trianthema portulacastrum L. and Musa paradisiaca L. against gastrointestinal nematodes of sheep. Veterinary Parasitology 2011;179(1-3):92-99. 2011. PMID:21440370
Bishayee A, Mandal A, Chatterjee M. Prevention of alcohol-carbon tetrachloride-induced signs of early hepatotoxicity in mice by Trianthema portulacastrum L. Phytomedicine 1996;3(2):155-161. 1996. PMID:23194963
Mandal A, Bandyopadhyay S, Chatterjee M. Trianthema portulacastrum L. reverses hepatic lipid peroxidation, glutathione status and activities of related antioxidant enzymes in carbon tetrachloride-induced chronic liver damage in mice. Phytomedicine 1997;4(3):239-244. 1997. PMID:23195482
Mandal A, Karmakar R, Bandyopadhyay S, Chatterjee M. Antihepatotoxic potential of Trianthema portulacastrum in carbon tetrachloride-induced chronic hepatocellular injury in mice. Archives of Pharmacal Research 1998;21(3):223-230. 1998. PMID:9875435
Bhattacharya S, Chatterjee M. Protective role of Trianthema portulacastrum against diethylnitrosoamine-induced experimental hepatocarcinogenesis. Cancer Letters 1998;129(1):7-13. 1998. PMID:9714329
Sarkar A, Pradhan S, Mukhopadhyay I, Bose SK, Roy S, Chatterjee M. Inhibition of early DNA-damage and chromosomal aberrations by Trianthema portulacastrum L. in carbon tetrachloride-induced mouse liver damage. Cell Biology International 1999;23(10):703-708. 1999. PMID:10736194
Kumar G, Banu GS, Pappa PV, Sundararajan M, Pandian MR. Hepatoprotective activity of Trianthema portulacastrum L. against paracetamol and thioacetamide intoxication in albino rats. Journal of Ethnopharmacology 2004;92(1):37-40. 2004. PMID:15099844
Sharmila Banu G, Kumar G, Murugesan AG. Ethanolic leaves extract of Trianthema portulacastrum L. ameliorates aflatoxin B1 induced hepatic damage in rats. Indian Journal of Clinical Biochemistry 2009;24(3):250-256. 2009. PMID:23105844
Sharmila Banu G, Kumar G, Murugesan AG. Effect of ethanolic leaf extract of Trianthema portulacastrum L. on aflatoxin induced hepatic damage in rats. Indian Journal of Clinical Biochemistry 2009;24(4):414-418. 2009. PMID:23105870
Bishayee A, Mandal A. Trianthema portulacastrum Linn. exerts chemoprevention of 7,12-dimethylbenz(a)anthracene-induced mammary tumorigenesis in rats. Mutation Research 2014;768:107-118. 2014. PMID:24451939
Falade T, Ishola IO, Akinleye MO, Oladimeji-Salami JA, Adeyemi OO. Antinociceptive and anti-arthritic effects of aqueous whole plant extract of Trianthema portulacastrum in rodents: possible mechanisms of action. Journal of Ethnopharmacology 2019;238:111831. 2019. PMID:30930256
Jimoh MA, Jimoh MO, Bello M, Raimi IO, Okunlola GO, Mkhwanazi N, Laubscher CP. In vitro anti-HIV, cytotoxicity and nutritional analysis of Trianthema portulacastrum L. (Aizoaceae). BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies 2024;24:35. 2024. PMID:38216975
Zihad SMNK, Gupt Y, Uddin SJ, Islam MT, Alam MR, Aziz S, Hossain M, Shilpi JA, Nahar L, Sarker SD. Nutritional value, micronutrient and antioxidant capacity of some green leafy vegetables commonly used by southern coastal people of Bangladesh. Heliyon 2019;5(11):e02768. 2019. PMID:31768435
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