The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Sesamum radiatum
In Singapore: Black Benniseed (Grown in Singapore)
Sesamum radiatum is an annual herb in the sesame genus, grown for its edible seeds and leaves in parts of West and Central Africa. It is tough and drought tolerant, thriving in sunny, dry conditions and poor soil.
Sesamum radiatum is a species of flowering plant in the Pedaliaceae. It is in the same genus as sesame, and is known by the English common names benniseed, black benniseed, black sesame, and vegetable sesame. (While the regular sesame, Sesamum indicum, may have black seeds, also referred to as black sesame, and is a related plant, it is a separate species from Sesamum radiatum.) It is native to west and central Africa, has been cultivated since ancient times in Africa, and is sometimes also used in tropical Asia where it has become naturalized to a small extent.
This plant is an annual herb growing up to 1.2 to 1.5 metres (3 ft 11 in to 4 ft 11 in) tall. The leaves are opposite, or toward the top of the plant, alternately arranged. The leaves are lance-shaped to oval and up to 12 centimetres (5 in) long. They may be smooth-edged or serrated. Flowers occur singly in the leaf axils. They are pink to purple in color, sometimes white, and somewhat bell-shaped. They measure up to 5 centimetres (2 in) long. The fruit is a capsule up to 3.5 centimetres (1+3⁄8 in) long which contains seeds roughly 3 millimetres (15⁄128 in) long.
This plant grows wild in savanna and other habitat types. It is also a weed of fields and homesteads. It can grow on poor, rocky soils and it flowers even through drought conditions. When cultivated the plant yields 5 to 6 metric tons (5.5 to 6.6 short tons) of leaves per hectare.
False sesame · Sesame · Sesame
[Contains information from Leaf Area Index (LAI) and Heritage Trees from data.gov.sg (National Parks Board), made available under the terms of the Singapore Open Data Licence version 1.0]
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Sesamum radiatum by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
