This ground-hugging plant with its fleshy, drought-resistant leaves is at its most spectacular when it opens its bright magenta flowers. Flowering happens at any time of year, depending on location. An introduced pigface species, Carpobrotus edulis, has yellow flowers.

Pigface is a valuable food plant. Its scientific name is derived from Greek words meaning ‘edible fruit’ – a fact well-known by Tasmanian Aborigines. For a guaranteed food source in dry, lean times they would camp close to the plant they knew as wend-dar.

Most valued was the sweet centre of the red or purple berry, an exceptionally tasty wild fruit with a flavour compared to strawberries, figs, kiwi fruit and raspberries. The fleshy leaves were eaten cooked, and the juice from the leaves was used to soothe blisters, burns and pain from insect bites.

Early European explorers used the plant as an anti-scurvy treatment.