Bloodleaf

Bloodleaf is a soft-stemmed tropical perennial from South America grown almost entirely for its foliage: rounded, slightly notched leaves in deep beetroot-purple laced with glowing magenta veins. It is widely planted as a bedding or container plant in warm, humid climates and as a houseplant elsewhere, forming a bushy mound up to about a metre tall.

• The magenta 'veins' are pigment (betalains, the same class of pigment as in beetroot) rather than chlorophyll, so the plant makes food mostly in the darker tissue between them.
• In the tropics it can flower, but the blooms are tiny, greenish and so unremarkable that growers usually pinch them off.
• Its close relative Iresine diffusa has been used in Central and South American folk medicine and ritual bathing.

Care
Give it bright light but shelter from scorching midday sun, keep the soil evenly moist, and pinch the shoot tips regularly to keep it bushy rather than leggy.