Traditional Green Vegetables: The Plants

Spider Plant (Cleome gynandra) , saga, mwangani  (Swahili), thangeti (Kikuyu), chiisaka (Luhya), a lot-dek (Luo), saget (Kalenjin), chinsaga (Kisii), mwianzo (Kamba), jjobyu (Luganda, yobyu (Lusoga).  Spider plant is a erect herbaceous annual herb with hairy, often purple  stems and many branches growing to a height of 1.0 meter.  The plant has edible leaves that contain 3 to 7 palmate leaflets growing up to 8 cm long.  The flower inflorescences are rather showy, long ad bearing many small white or pink flowers.  The elongate fruit resembles a pod, but is refered to as a capsule, containing many small, dark seeds.  Spider plant originated in Africa or Tropical Asia but now has a worldwide distribution, including North and South America, the Far East, Australasia and the Pacific Islands.  It belongs to the family Capparidaceae. 

In Kenya, It grows from sea level to 2400 metres.  The plant is either cultivated or harvested from the wild, and when cultivated, it is usually grown by broadcasting seeds on raised beds.  It is a fast growing plant that is ready for harvest in as few as three weeks.  The leaves are eaten as a cooked green with a bitter taste and contains 5% protein, 6% carbohydrates and is high in vitamins A and C, calcium, phosphorus and iron.  The bitter taste is derived from polyphenolics, which constitute from 0.5 to 0.9% of the edible leaf.  The plant is able to tolerate infertile soils and short-term drought but is susceptible to chewing insects and birds.  The leaves are usually eaten fresh but may also be dried and stored for up to two years but this practise greatly reduces the crop’s nutrition value.   Another name for this plant is Cat’s Whiskers.