Plant · P-733

Wild Sesame

Sesamum radiatum

Wild Sesame is grown mainly as a leafy green rather than an oilseed - the young shoots are cooked into soups and sauces, or dried and powdered for later use, and the raw leaf's mucilaginous texture and faint odor disappear with cooking. Cut every week or two, a stand keeps producing leaf for months, and the seed can also be pressed for an oil often blended into ordinary sesame oil. It thrives on poor, sandy, free-draining ground through heat and drought, wants full sun, and shows no recorded tolerance for cold.