Atriplex hortensis
Orache is a soft, mild leafy green with leaves that may be green, red, or purple. Garden orache is an old cultivated vegetable; several wild Atriplex species also occur around saline ground.1 The cultivated plant and the coastal wild greens share a place in the larger history of edible goosefoots: older food-plant references group orache with other once-important leafy vegetables such as good king henry and fat hen.2
The coastal orache described by UMaine also goes by saltbush: it grows in salty soils around Maine’s marshy inlets and tidal rivers. Its young shoots and leaves can be gathered in late spring or early summer, and the plant may carry edible seed heads later on. The natural salts taken up from that habitat give the green a distinctly mineral flavor, stronger than ordinary garden spinach.1
Orache belongs to the same broad plant family as beet, spinach, and lamb’s-quarters. The leaves look different, but all can carry a similarly mild, mineral quality when young.
Garden orache is native to western Asia and southeastern Europe and was once widely cultivated, declining in importance after the eighteenth century. It can be used much like spinach; the familiar red and yellow forms are also grown ornamentally.2 The colored forms bring a vivid visual range to a crop whose flavor stays comparatively soft and vegetal.
Garden orache is an annual rather than a perennial green. It grows quickly in full sun, and its thin leaves can be green, white, or red; the small flowers are inconspicuous and give way to seed-bearing clusters. The plant is unusually tolerant of heat and salt, which helps explain both its old role as a warm-weather spinach substitute and the distinct mineral character of the coastal Maine saltbush.34
The name covers two related Northeast food contexts: cultivated Atriplex hortensis in a garden, and the wild coastal Atriplex patula described by Maine Extension. They should not be collapsed into one foraging instruction. In either case, young leaves are the tender part, while older plants become more assertive and the seed heads add another edible stage.1
Footnotes
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University of Maine Cooperative Extension, “Facts on Edible Wild Greens in Maine,” accessed July 17, 2026. ↩ ↩2 ↩3
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John Vaughan and Catherine Geissler, The New Oxford Book of Food Plants, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 210 (PDF p. 245). ↩ ↩2
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University of Bergen University Gardens, “Atriplex hortensis (garden orache),” accessed September 7, 2026. ↩
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Missouri Botanical Garden, “Atriplex hortensis, mountain spinach,” accessed September 7, 2026. ↩