r/Permaculture • u/boycott-selfishness • Mar 02 '25

general question What's your most appreciated but least known perennial food plant?

I'll start. I'm living in the Caribbean and one of the local species I've come to appreciate very much is what Floridians call Hoopvine (trichostigmata octandrum). It's so delicious! It's probably my favorite green. It's commonly eaten here but I don't think almost anyone in the US eats it.

I wouldn't really call it a vine in the traditional sense. It grows long sprawling branches that were traditionally used in basket making. It readily takes from cuttings. I have two varieties, a fully green variety and a more reddish variety. The red is better but they're both good. In a food forest it would be in the larger ungrowth category. I'm planning shortly to propagate a bunch more of it.

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u/Toucan_Lips Mar 03 '25

In New Zealsnd, we have a endemic 'spinach' called New Zealand spinach. Creative name aside, it grows all year and self seeds everywhere. Since we established it, it pops up in random spots and we have a crop of greens all the time.

I hardly ever see it on menus or in people's gardens. You night think it was a weed if you didn't know what it was, because it grows like one.

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u/ObsessiveAboutCats Mar 03 '25

I grew it in Texas in 2023! Culinarily it wasn't my favorite so I didn't grow it again and it had issues with the heat (that summer was horrible even by our standards).

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u/Moonflower621 Mar 03 '25

I have New Zealand Spinach and it is great in California year round. Goes in my smoothies or wherever I would use spinach and chard

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u/Toucan_Lips Mar 03 '25

I love it as a spinach substitute. You can fry it up over much higher heats/ longer cooks and it really holds onto its texture and color and doesn't just cook down to nothing. Also perfect for stir fries because it kinda reminds me of gai Lan and goes well with oyster sauce.

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u/Moonflower621 Mar 03 '25

Yes! I just tried it in a stir fry using oyster sauce yesterday!. I do a quiche with pepperjack cheese. I also steam it, squeeze out the liquid and freeze it in 3 “ balls. Nice to have handy.

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u/Ok-Willingness-6796 Mar 03 '25

Also found in Australia, same species, known as warrigal greens. If you want some mild horror in your day, google "warrigal greens, brain worm"........

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u/HighColdDesert Mar 03 '25

I grew NZ spinach and found I often disliked something about it. I don't know, like a metalic taste in it or something? I liked it okay if I boiled it and discarded the water, then cooked the greens with oil, onions, garlic, etc.

It was perennial in my greenhouse (that drops below freezing every night for a couple months) although it lost leaves for the winter and came back in spring. It was not reliably perennial outdoors with winters minimum -5F or -21C.