Sooby, agree so much! If people are eating P. umbraticola, they're not eating the original plant called purslane. I was trying to find out which specific plant any particular person might be discussing by moving beyond the nicknames.
When someone says purslane and Portulaca are very different, it's apparent that an insufficient explanation has yet been offered, and still doesn't tell us which plant they are referring to by the nickname purslane. They're all Portulacas, and many of them are called purslane as a common name/nickname. The comparison is analogous to saying privet and Ligustrum are very different.
