Curated playlist
Botanical taxa named by Carl Linnaeus
- MaizeMaize cannot reproduce without people. Its kernels stay locked to the cob instead of scattering.
- WheatHighly domesticated wheat cannot survive in the wild. Its seeds no longer scatter, so it depends on people.
- FraxinusA fingernail-sized beetle has killed tens of millions of ash trees across 22 U.S. states.
- GarlicAncient Greeks left garlic on piles of stones at crossroads as supper for the goddess Hecate.
- RyePliny the Elder called rye a "very poor food", but northern peoples built food cultures on it.
- OakA Bulgarian oak known as the Granit oak has been alive for an estimated 1,637 years.
- OatOats began as a weed that early farmers kept planting by accident.
- PeaThe word pea comes from a mistake: English speakers took pease for a plural and dropped the s.
- Phaseolus vulgarisFour or five raw, soaked kidney beans can make a person sick.
- Sweet potatoSweet potatoes were in Polynesia centuries before any European ship arrived.
- CannabisA shaman in northwest China was buried with 789 grams of cannabis. Researchers later confirmed it still held THC.
- MapleDuring World War II, the US Army copied maple seeds to build an airdrop supply carrier.
- BasilA pot of basil in a Boccaccio tale led to a Keats poem and two paintings. The herb's name means royal plant in Greek.
- CitrusAlmost all the citrus we eat descends from just three ancestral species. They are mandarin, pomelo and citron.
- Indigofera tinctoriaThe shrub Indigofera tinctoria once colored emperors' robes, and most indigo sold today is synthetic.
- PeanutThe peanut, Arachis hypogaea, buries its own fruit, and its Latin species name means "under the earth." In 2023 the world produced 54 million tonnes of peanuts, with China supplying 36 percent of the total and India 19 percent. The plant…
- WillowThe willow tree has a famous origin story in England, and it begins with a parcel of twigs. A shipment sent from Spain to Lady Suffolk arrived tied up with willow twigs. The poet Alexander Pope begged one of them for himself. He planted…
- FragariaThe red flesh of a strawberry is not a fruit at all. It is swollen stem tissue, and the true fruits are the tiny specks.
- Gossypium hirsutumRoughly 90% of the world's cotton comes from one plant, upland cotton. Its scientific name is Gossypium hirsutum.
- Gossypium barbadenseOne mild winter in 1785 let Georgia planters finally grow Sea Island cotton.
- Theobroma cacaoTheobroma cacao is a tree that produces thousands of flowers and surprisingly little fruit. A mature tree may open 6,000 blossoms in a single year. Only about 20 of them mature into pods. Those few pods hold the seeds that become…
- Datura stramoniumDatura stramonium turned up in the Australian food supply in December 2022, and around 200 people reported becoming ill afterward. Its young leaves had been picked along with spinach leaves, and the products were sold mostly through…
- Hyoscyamus nigerHenbane's medieval name meant roughly "thing that causes death", yet people sought it out.
- Ficus religiosaFicus religiosa, the sacred fig, is revered by four major religions at once. All four began in the Indian subcontinent.
- Papaver somniferumPapaver somniferum, known as the opium poppy or breadseed poppy, is the one plant that supplies both morphine and the seeds that decorate baked goods. In 1987, agents of the Drug Enforcement Administration raided Thomas Jefferson's…
- OliveThe olive, a subtropical evergreen tree that botanists call Olea europaea, once led the writer Georges Duhamel to remark that the "Mediterranean ends where the olive tree no longer grows." That is a large claim for a short, squat tree…
- CactusThe cactus family has no genus called Cactus. Botanists at a 1905 Vienna congress voted to reject the name.
- Vicia fabaVicia faba carries 13 GB of DNA in its cells, one of the largest genomes among diploid field crops, with a predicted 34,221 protein-coding genes. That is a heavy genetic load for a plant that looks like an ordinary garden bean. Vicia faba…
- Dioscorea alataAround 1939, a Mambatap greater yam grown in Maprik, in the East Sepik District of Papua New Guinea, reached 3.5 m in length. That giant root belonged to Dioscorea alata, a species of yam better known as ube. People also call it ubi, uwhi,…
- Juglans regiaWitches were said to gather at a walnut tree in Benevento, Italy. A judge wrote about them in 1526.
- Atropa bella-donnaAtropa bella-donna, better known as deadly nightshade, put one adult woman into severe poisoning in 2009 after she mistook its berries for blueberries. She ate six. Doctors documented the result as a severe anticholinergic syndrome, a…
- RutabagaThe rutabaga has its own curling championship. A farmers' market in Ithaca, New York, stages the International Rutabaga Curling Championship every year, on the last day of its market season. In August, the villages of Askov, Minnesota, and…
- RicinusRicinus communis, the castor oil plant, bears seeds of which only four to eight are considered a lethal dose for an adult. Guinness World Records calls it the world's most poisonous common plant. Even so, reports of actual poisoning are…
- FigThe fig, the fruit of a tree known to botanists as Ficus carica, may have been the first plant that people ever grew on purpose. The evidence is nine small figs found at Gilgal I, an early Neolithic village in the Jordan Valley, 13 km…
- TurmericTurmeric, known to botanists as Curcuma longa, may owe its English name to the Latin phrase terra merita, which means deserved earth. The Latin word longa in its scientific name simply means long. That modest label sits oddly on a root…
- SorrelSorrel, known to botanists as Rumex acetosa, sits at the center of a famous plate of fish. In 1962 the Troisgros brothers invented a dish of salmon escalope in sorrel sauce, and it became an emblem of French nouvelle cuisine. The flavor…
- Conium maculatumConium maculatum, the plant better known as hemlock, was once swallowed on purpose by an English physician named John Harley. In 1869 he published what he learned in a book called The Old Vegetable Neurotics. He had tested a hemlock…
- FicusA fig is not really a fruit but a fleshy stem that swallowed its own flowers.
- Angelica archangelicaAngelica archangelica looks a great deal like several poisonous plants, including members of the genera Conium and Heracleum. The warning that comes with it is blunt. Nobody should eat it unless it has been identified with absolute…
- Asimina trilobaAsimina triloba, the American pawpaw, is a small deciduous tree of eastern North American forests that bears a fruit with a custard-like texture. Ohio botanist William B. Werthner once wrote that the fruit is sweet and a little puckery,…
- Ginkgo bilobaGinkgo biloba is a tree that lived through the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 and simply kept growing. Six ginkgos there were among the few living things in the area to survive the blast. Almost every other plant and animal…
- Morus (plant)Morus is a genus of deciduous trees with 19 species, and the three names most people attach to it are misleading. White, red and black mulberries are named for the color of their dormant buds, not for the color of their fruit. The genus is…
- Camellia sinensisCamellia sinensis, the tea plant, grows on the island of Shapinsay in the Orkney Islands, at 59 degrees north. That is the northernmost tea plantation on record, and the same species is also grown commercially at the equator. This…
- Urtica dioicaUrtica dioica, the common stinging nettle, owes part of its modern fame to a boast made by one farmer to another in 1986. The two were neighbours, and each insisted that his own land had the worse nettle infestation. One of them finally…