Haitian Basket Vine – Perennial Leafy Green with High Potential – Trichostigma octandrum

This is a perennial vegetable that is primarily known in Haiti, where it is called Liann Panye.  In Haiti, it is reputed to be nutritious and life sustaining in times of illness or malnourishment.  In a local Florida food bank that works with Haitians, there is high demand for the greens.  The long clambering stems are woven into baskets.  Wild populations of this plant are actually native to parts of South Florida.  This is a perennial vegetable that we have cultivated for a lot of years but more recently started paying more attention to as something with a lot of untapped potential.  The boiled young greens are of very high quality, being soft and mild like a dense spinach.  As far as we can tell, some level of boiling is always practiced in Haiti.  We don’t know if this is absolutely necessary but we think it’s best to stick with the native usage until more is known.  The plant has a habit like Bouganvillea, being a “vine” that really behaves more like a shrub.  The long whips that sprout out seeking trees to lean on are what are harvested for young, tender greens.  A taller hedge can even be trained with hedge trimmers as it is highly adapted to aggressive pruning. It is a long lived perennial, probably able to survive many decades.  The plant is sensitive to cold but we have observed it reliably return from 20F freezes from the roots, though we don’t know the northern limit to cultivation.  An exciting feature of this plant is that it can grow and produce well in significant shade that we wouldn’t plant many other species in.   In fact, it seems to grow even better in fairly deep shade and produce more tender shoots for consumption.  This plant should be amongst the ranks of moringa, chaya and katuk as Florida low-input perennial vegetables for improving nutrition.  Like these other plants, basket vine is available to harvest during the sweltering Florida summer when most garden vegetables cannot survive.  Plants are started easily from cuttings or ground layering.