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| Claytonia perfoliata |
| Family: Montiaceae (Montia) |
| Flowers — color: white, size: 1/8", type: 5 petals |
One or more tiny flowers float above a round leaf. Each of the five petals is bisected by a faint vein, and the end may have a slight indentation.
Habit:
Miner's Lettuce is an annual herb with highly variable size. The plant starts as a rosete of leaves. From this base rises a dozen or more stems with round or heart-shaped leaves and the flower cluster. The flower stem seems to perforate the rounded leaf, hence the species name perfoliata.
The presence on Miner's Lettuce indicates the vitality of the oaks and the extra moisture their shade provides. Under an oak growing in open grassland, the stems were a foot long and the leaves several inches wide. This colony resembled lilypads in a pond. Deep in an oak woodland, I found it growing as ground cover, maybe an inch high with 1/4" leaves [compare to the size of cheat grass]. Some of these smaller kind are yellowing in April when the larger samples I showed are still lush.
As the common name suggests, the leaves are succulent and edible. Containing Vitamin C, 49'er miners in the Gold Rush used the greens to prevent scurvy, either as a salad or similar to spinach. It is cultivated in Europe as winter purslane. This plant enjoys shady, moister conditions underneath an oak tree, but will often wilt by summer.