highest when the plant is harvested in the early morning. Aboriginal Australians use the seeds of purslane to make seedcakes. Greeks, who call it () or (), use the leaves and the stems with feta cheese, tomato, onion, garlic, oregano, and olive oil. They add it to salads, boil it, or add it to casseroled chicken. In Turkey, besides being used in salads and baked pastries, it is cooked as a vegetable similar to spinach or is mixed with yogurt to form a tzatziki variant. In Egypt, it is also cooked like spinach as a vegetable dish, but not in salads. In Kurdistan, people commonly make a kind of soup from it called palpina soup (شۆربای پەڵپینە). In the Alentejo region of Portugal, purslane is used for cooking a traditional soup (sopa de beldroegas) which is topped with soaked bread, poached eggs, and/or goats' cheese. In Mexico and the American Southwest, the plant is consumed as "verdolagas." Soil salinity Soil salination on agricultural soils can cause a decrease in crop yields, and it is no longer possible to grow salt-sensitive species on that soil. Purslane has a high tolerance for salt toxicity, making it suitable for cropping in areas where irrigation is carried out with water with high chloride-based salinity. Purslane can remove salt from the cultivation medium under saline conditions. As an intercrop or during one growing season, it can remove 210 kg/ha of chloride and 65 kg/ha of sodium when cultivated at 6.5 dS *m−1, allowing growth of salt-sensitive plants on saline soils. Purslane has a positive effect on companion plants in salty conditions, such as tomatoes. Culture Archaeobotanical finds are common at many Mediterranean prehistoric sites. In historic contexts, seeds have been retrieved from a protogeometric layer in Kastanas, as well as from the Samian Heraion dating to the 7th century BC. In the 4th century BC, Theophrastus names purslane, (), as one of the several summer pot herbs that must be sown in April (Enquiry into Plants 7.1.2). As Portulaca it figures in the long list of comestibles enjoyed by the Milanese given by Bonvesin de la Riva in his "Marvels of Milan" (1288). In antiquity, its healing properties were thought so reliable that Pliny the Elder advised wearing the plant as an amulet to expel all evil (Natural History 20.210). Verdolaga, the Spanish word for purslane, is a nickname for South American football clubs with