| MadSci Network: Botany |
Seeds are our most important food source but we eat all parts of plants including fruits, flowers, stems, leaves and roots. Some of what we call vegetables, such as eggplant, tomato, green bean, pepper, and squash are actually fruits in the botanical sense. In gardening language, root crops are any that have edible underground parts, however, the edible underground plant parts may be root, stem, or a combination of root, stem, and even leaf. Some edible root crops, such as carrot, beet, and radish, are a combination of root and stem tissue. Radish is mainly stem; carrot and beet mainly root. Onion and garlic bulbs are mainly leaf but some stem. Technically, grains, such as corn and wheat, are botanically fruits but are mainly seed so are classified as seeds here. Many plants fit in more than one category. For example, pea and bean can be in seed category but snow pea and green bean would fit in fruit category because the pod is the main edible part. Some examples follow. You can easily add more to most of the categories. Seed: bean, corn, wheat, rice, barley, oat, peanut, coffee, chocolate, pine, walnut, sunflower, pecan, almond, cashew, pea, cola nut (for cola drinks), several spices such as nutmeg, mustard seed, anise seed, poppy seed, carraway seed, cumin seed, dill seed, fennel seed and celery seed; oil seeds such as safflower, sesame, and canola Fruit: apple, pear, peach, orange, lemon, lime, persimmon, banana, pineapple, mango, papaya, strawberry, tomato, olive, plum, date, pomegranite, jujube, vanilla, coconut, paprika Flower: cauliflower, artichoke, broccoli, squash, daylily, violet, nasturtium, saffron (spice from dried stigmas of flower), cattail, capers (pickled flower buds), cloves (spice), dandelion (dandelion wine), honeysuckle (can sip sweet nectar), hops (flavors beer), [bees use pollen and nectar from thousands of flowering species to make honey] Stem: potato, asparagus, sugar cane, ginger "root" (actually a rhizome or underground stem), Jerusalem artichoke, water chestnut, cinnamon (spice from bark), bamboo shoot, radish Leaf: lettuce, cabbage, tea, spinach, mustard greens, turnip greens, celery (celery stalk is leaf petiole, not a stem), onion and garlic (mainly swollen leaves with a bit of stem), many herbs and spices such as parsley, basil, chives, rosemary, thyme, peppermint, sage, marjorum, oregano, tarragon, watercress, and bayleaf Root: carrot, sweet potato, yam, beet, sugar beet, horse radish, turnip, rutabaga, cassava, spices such as licorice, sarsaparilla and sassafras (both used in root beer) References Re: Fruits and vegetables/ fruits and vegetable plants Alternative Root Crops What is the Difference Between a Sweetpotato and a Yam? Saffron Incredible Edible Flowers Edible plant morphology Gernot Katzer's Spice Pages
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