Basella rubra Seeds | Malabar Spinach
LATIN NAME: Basella rubra
COMMON NAME: Malabar Spinach, Ceylon Spinach
Plant Profile
Malabar spinach is not a spinach at all but a twining vine of the basella family, and it does the one thing true spinach cannot: it thrives in heat. The stems are thick, fleshy and often deep red, the leaves are heart-shaped, glossy and succulent, and small white-pink flowers give way to round, dark purple berries that stain the fingers. It climbs two to six metres in a season and is picked leaf by leaf for the kitchen, which is why it is grown across the tropics. In a hot summer it will keep producing when lettuce has bolted and true spinach has turned bitter. The stems root at the nodes where they touch damp ground, which is how a single plant becomes a curtain.
Science & Biotechnology
Basella rubra and B. alba are now usually treated as one species, with the red-stemmed form retaining the name rubra, and the colour comes from betalains rather than anthocyanins, a chemical signature shared with beets and cacti and not with most other flowering plants. The leaves are mildly mucilaginous, a property that thickens soups and is the reason for its use as a soothing food. Compared with true spinach it keeps growing and remains tender above thirty degrees, which has made it a subject in tropical leafy-green breeding, where it is screened as a heat-stable alternative in West Africa and South-East Asia. It is also one of the few leaf vegetables that accumulates useful amounts of calcium and iron without the oxalate load of spinach.
Uses & Benefits
The young leaves and shoot tips are cooked like spinach, in curries, stir-fries and soups, and the mucilage gives body to broths without flour. In parts of Asia the red form is used as a food colouring for rice and sweets, and the berries yield the same pigment. Traditional use treats it as a cooling, mildly laxative green for hot weather. In the garden it is a productive edible climber for a fence or trellis in a hot summer, and it is ornamental enough to grow among flowers, with the red stems carrying the display. The stems are cut and cooked as a vegetable in some regions, and the plant is grown as a living screen on trellises in dense tropical cities.
Growing from Seed
The seed coat is hard, so soak the seed overnight in warm water before sowing. Sow two centimetres deep in a warm, free-draining mix at twenty-five to thirty degrees, and expect germination in two to three weeks. Give the seedlings a trellis from the start, because the vine will find it and then will not be moved. Water steadily, feed lightly, and pick the tips regularly to keep the plant branching and tender. It sets viable seed freely in a long season, and self-sown seedlings appear the following year. Pinch the leading shoot at planting to encourage side branches, and keep the vine off the ground.
Our Take
The hot-weather spinach that actually works, ornamental enough for the fence and productive enough for the kitchen. Pick it young and it keeps coming.
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