Towards the end of August 1952 a short note appeared in some of the Madras dailies from the Agricultural Department that the department was propagating and doing propaganda about new kind of spinach, Talinum triangulare, reported to be a very useful plant for the kitchen garden, being easily grown in the shade, and that the Director of Agriculture obtained the seeds from Ceylon, that he was growing the plant in his own garden and in some of the departmental farms in about two months It is very interesting to see that Sri Sivaraman, the Director, has always a peculiar knack of tracing out such useful plants and encouraging their distribution to the people. This plant is fairly widely found in the West coast and is possibly introducedr into ou country from Ceylon and is generally known as Ceylon keerai'. It is also found in the neighbouring district of Coimbatore. Ochse in "Vegetables of the Dutch East Indies", mentions that the plant was introduced into Java from Surinam in 1915.
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