Sea Purslane

About the Sea Purslane

Sea Purslane is the tough green carpet of the Texas beach -- a sprawling succulent that runs across bare sand and salt flats where almost nothing else will grow, dotted with small starry pink-purple blooms that open with the morning sun. Every part of it is built for the job: fleshy water-storing leaves, stems that root wherever a node touches sand, and a full tolerance for salt spray and storm tides.

It is also a quiet hero of the coast. Those running stems knit loose sand together and start the process of dune-building; where sea purslane takes hold, sand stays put and other plants follow. After hurricanes it is often among the first greenery back on a scoured beach.

For a bird photographer it is scenery with a job -- the green foreground under the plovers and the ghost crabs, and worth a frame of its own when the flowers are open. This patch was photographed at Bolivar in April 2022 along the upper edge of the flats.

Get low and shoot through the flowers in early light, when the blooms are open and the sand still has shadow texture. By afternoon the flowers close up shop and the carpet goes back to plain green.