The black oyster plant

By: Pfeiffer in Floral & Fauna on Jan. 8, 2012
black oyster plant

Black oyster plants belong to the family of Boraginaceae and doesn`t belong to plants to heal. Because of their after oyster tasting taste they are used as spiceplants. The black oyster plant you find on beaches with sand and be load along the northatlantic. The oyster plant Mertensia maritima is a crowling, perennial succulent coastplant with blue-grew, until 6 cm long leaves. The funnel-shaped florals are rosy in the beginning and later transparent blue.

Both the leaves and the shaft can be eaten raw are cooked. When you cook them you smell a taste which reminds on oyster. Strange us that people report from the smell who never ate oyster before. It has also a very soft taste. Often people describe also a delicate taste after oyster with a tone of mushroom. The leaves are a welcomed change which fit to salad or to vegetarian food. Also the beefy rhizonom is cooked eatable. For the Inuit it is a definite part of their food. But today the black oyster plant is seldom so that you better keep the rhizonom. To cultivate the plant you use a sandy ground with a good drainage. You can mix alittle saltt in the ground. They should stay sunny.

Its oringins are in the religion of the Mediterrian. In antique times they were used as vegetables. In the 13th century from Albertus Magnus noticed and during the following centuries always mentioned again the black oyster plant displace the normal oyster plant in the 19th century. Today there is only a mentionable cultuvation in England. There it is called vegetable oyster. In the garden the plant root and the leaves grow in the first year. A violett bloom shows up in the second year. She opens in the morning and closes in the evening. After the bloom the plant root gets hard like wood.

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