| Sea Spinach | |
|---|---|
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Plantae |
| (unranked): | Angiosperms |
| (unranked): | Eudicots |
| (unranked): | Core eudicots |
| Order: | Caryophyllales |
| Family: | Aizoaceae |
| Genus: | Tetragonia |
| Species: | T. decumbens |
| Binomial name | |
| Tetragonia decumbens Mill. |
|
Tetragonia decumbens, commonly known as Sea Spinach, is a coastal shrub native to southern Africa.
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It grows as a trailing undershrub with thick, pale, furry stems, and thick, oval leaves one to six centimetres line and five to thirty millimetres wide. Flowers occur in clusters of three to five, and comprise four light yellow perianth segments surrounding a centre of many stamens.[1]
It was first described and named by Philip Miller in 1768.[2] In 1862 the name T. zeyheri was published by Eduard Fenzl, but this has since been determined to be a synonym of T. decumbens.[3]
Native to southern Africa, it grows on coastal and estuarine sand dunes.
It is naturalised in Australia, where it occurs in Western Australia, South Australia and New South Wales.[2] The New South Wales specimens were long misidentified as T. nigrescens.[4] It was also formerly naturalised in Victoria, but it is now extinct there.[2]