Plantae > Tracheophyta > Magnoliopsida > Caryophyllales > Basellaceae > Basella > Basella alba

Basella alba (Ceylon spinach)

Synonyms:

Wikipedia Abstract

Basella alba is an edible perennial vine in the family Basellaceae. It is found in tropical Asia and Africa where it is widely used as a leaf vegetable. It is native to the Indian Subcontinent, Southeast Asia and New Guinea. It is reportedly naturalized in China, tropical Africa, Brazil, Belize, Colombia, the West Indies, Fiji and French Polynesia. Basella alba is known under various common names, including Malabar Spinach vine spinach, red vine spinach, climbing spinach, creeping spinach, buffalo spinach and Ceylon spinach among .
View Wikipedia Record: Basella alba

Attributes

Edible [1]  May be edible. See the Plants For A Future link below for details.
Flower Type [1]  Hermaphrodite
Lifespan [1]  Perennial
Structure [1]  Vine
Usage [1]  A red dye is obtained from the juice of the fruits; It has been used as a rouge and also as a dye for official seals;
Height [1]  30 feet (9 m)
View Plants For A Future Record : Basella alba

Protected Areas

Name IUCN Category Area acres Location Species Website Climate Land Use
Gombe National Park II 8799 Tanzania
Mount Kulal Biosphere Reserve 1729738 Kenya  

Predators

External References

USDA Plant Profile

NatureServe Explorer

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Plants For A Future licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
♦ 2Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
♦ 3HOSTS - a Database of the World's Lepidopteran Hostplants Gaden S. Robinson, Phillip R. Ackery, Ian J. Kitching, George W. Beccaloni AND Luis M. Hernández
♦ 4Ben-Dov, Y., Miller, D.R. & Gibson, G.A.P. ScaleNet 4 November 2009
♦ 5Diet of Grauer’s Gorillas in the Montane Forest of Kahuzi, Democratic Republic of Congo; Juichi Yamagiwa, Augustin Kanyunyi Basabose, Kiswele Kaleme, and Takakazu Yumoto; International Journal of Primatology, Vol. 26, No. 6, December 2005, p. 1345-1373
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0