''Suaeda pulvinata'' is an endemic seepweed from

Mexico Mexico ( Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guate ...

. It lives in the shores of

Lake Texcoco Lake Texcoco ( es, Lago de Texcoco) was a natural lake within the "Anahuac" or Valley of Mexico. Lake Texcoco is best known as where the Aztecs built the city of Tenochtitlan, which was located on an island within the lake. After the Spanish con ...

and Lake Totolcingo. It lives underwater as an

aquatic plant Aquatic plants are plants that have adapted to living in aquatic environments ( saltwater or freshwater). They are also referred to as hydrophytes or macrophytes to distinguish them from algae and other microphytes. A macrophyte is a plant that ...

for half of the year and in dry land as a

terrestrial plant A terrestrial plant is a plant that grows on, in, or from land. Other types of plants are aquatic (living in water), epiphytic (living on trees) and lithophytic (living in or on rocks). The distinction between aquatic and terrestrial plants is ...

for the other half due to the changing levels of the lakes that it inhabits. It is a perennial flat

herb In general use, herbs are a widely distributed and widespread group of plants, excluding vegetables and other plants consumed for macronutrients, with savory or aromatic properties that are used for flavoring and garnishing food, for medicina ...

with prostrate stems. Its leaves and inflorescences are green to reddish in color. This species is important for people that live in the states of

Puebla Puebla ( en, colony, settlement), officially Free and Sovereign State of Puebla ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Puebla), is one of the 32 states which comprise the Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided into 217 municipalities and its cap ...

and

Tlaxcala Tlaxcala (; , ; from nah, Tlaxcallān ), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Tlaxcala ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Tlaxcala), is one of the 32 states which comprise the Federal Entities of Mexico. It is divided into 60 municipaliti ...

, as it is an edible

vegetable Vegetables are parts of plants that are consumed by humans or other animals as food. The original meaning is still commonly used and is applied to plants collectively to refer to all edible plant matter, including the flowers, fruits, stems ...

. The dish that is prepared using this species is known as

romeritos Romeritos is a Mexican dish from Central Mexico, consisting of tender sprigs of seepweed ( ''Suaeda'' spp.) which are boiled and served in a mole sauce seasoned with shrimp jerky blended into the mix. Typical additional ingredients include boile ...

. It has been found in molecular phylogenetic studies that this taxon is

monophyletic In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic ...

. Due to differences in its phylogenetic position in its nuclear ITS tree and its chloroplast rpl32-trnL tree, it is thought this species is the result of hybridization of ancestral species of ''Suaeda''. The first scientific collector who found this plant was Efraim Hernandez Xolocotzi. Later, it was cited by Guadalupe Ramos in her university degree thesis. However, he misidentified it for ''S. nigra''. It was in 2013 that Ernesto Alvarado Reyes and Hilda Flores Olvera noticed it was a different species.

References

External links

* http://www.tropicos.org/Name/100425076 pulvinata Halophytes Flora of Mexico Edible plants Barilla plants {{Amaranthaceae-stub