The Portulaca – I love you and I dislike you too!

There was a time that the portulaca was so popular in Singapore that one can see them being sold everywhere and everyone seems to be growing a pot in their gardens! The craze for this flowering plant is quite easy to discern – the plant produces eye-catching flowers that can be single or double and are available in a dazzling range of colours. Some even have petals that are striped with another contrasting colour!

Besides being classified via the appearance of their flowers, portulacas have different leaf shapes as well – some have leaves that are small and broad while others are needle-shaped. I was told by a local nurseryman that the needle-shaped cultivars are more suitable for growing in the outdoors in Singapore as they are less liable to rot.

Look at the field of white ‘buttercups’created by growing a bed of white, single-flowered portulaca at HortPark!

Due to its prostrating and trailing habit, the portulaca is often used as a ground-cover or a candidate for growing in window boxes. I also used this plant as a ground-cover in my Community Garden to conceal the bare ground under the Yellow Bells tree planted by Mrs Lim. It is grown in the then medicinal herb garden as it is reported to possess depurative properties medicinally.

Another plus point about this plant is the lack of need to water it. In fact, over-watering kills it as it is a plant that can be classified as a succulent. It, therefore, can tolerate some degree of drought. It is a sun-lover also. The plant needs to be grown under direct sunshine to keep compact and encourage it to flower profusely. Although often called the “ten o’clock flower”, in Singapore, the portulaca seems to start opening its blossoms an hour before!

I love this plant for the reasons I have described above and planted a whole bed of it some time back. However, I have removed it too and replaced it with something else recently.

First, the Yellow Bells tree has grown bigger with a much extended canopy. This has cast excessive shade over the portulaca plants below, causing them to sulk. The plants became etiolated (very ugly) and flowered less profusely. This is the chief reason for its replacement.

Next, the plants, with time, will grow quite straggly with long, bare stems that are aesthetically unappealling. To rip of the whole bed and do the replanting is extremely tedious and time-consuming. Not many of my community gardeners are keen to do this. In fact, for me, I quietly dislike doing this! I am sure the same is felt by my fellow community gardeners… We have to actually take very short tip cuttings (at most 5 cm long) and plant them in small clumps on the bed. Because the bed is so big, we actually have to spend many hours, with our legs bent, to complete the entire replanting session.