The people on my local (statewide) wildcrafting group are wild about purslane, but I never saw any on this land or anywhere nearby. Then I planted some fig seeds off of eBay in a six-cell tray using my local potting soil mix (decomposed wood duff from my oak forest plus a bit of raked-up leaf mould). The fig seeds didn't germinate but this plant sprouted in one of the cells. It looks like every description and picture of purslane I've seen, it's moist and crunchy and slightly mucilaginous and very tasty (the little piece I carefully sampled anyway) and surprisingly not-fibrous, even in the stems. I know some people (waves at Joseph) consider it a horrid weed, but it looks to me like an awesome ground cover that will store water, shade out other things, and be harvestable by the armload (if it thrives) as a moisture-containing mulch to put around drought-stressed plants. Plus, if it's purslane, it's good in soups and salads, albeit too high in oxylates to be eating it in stupid large volumes.
What say you clever people: is it indeed purslane? Because if it is, I'm going to nurture it and plant it in my orchard area and eat of it frequently.
