Curated category
Crops
- Bell pepperBell peppers have been growing in human hands for roughly 7,000 years, making them one of the oldest domesticated crops on earth.
- MangoMango is the national fruit of three countries simultaneously: India, Pakistan, and the Philippines. That single fact hints at something unusual.
- WheatWheat grows on more land than any other food crop on Earth. In 2024, farmers planted it across 219.5 million hectares, and the world harvested 799 million…
- LettuceLettuce, known scientifically as Lactuca sativa, was once a sacred plant carried in the festivals of Min, the Egyptian god of reproduction.
- CassavaCassava feeds more than 800 million people worldwide. It is the third-largest source of carbohydrates in the tropics, sitting behind only rice and maize.
- OnionThe onion, Allium cepa, is the most widely cultivated species of an entire genus of vegetables, yet its ancestral wild form has never been found.
- BeanFour or five raw red kidney beans can leave a person doubled over with stomachache, vomiting, and diarrhea. The culprit is a flavourless toxin called…
- SugarcaneSugarcane is a tall, perennial grass whose jointed stalks store sucrose, and in 2020 it became the world's largest crop by production quantity at 1.9 billion…
- Chili pepperChili peppers have been shaping human diets since roughly 7,500 BC, making them one of the oldest cultivated crops in the Americas.
- AlmondEach February, more than 1 million beehives are loaded onto trucks and driven across the United States to a single crop in California.
- CoconutCoconut, Cocos nucifera, may be the single plant most responsible for human civilizations reaching distant shores. The Austronesian peoples who crossed open…
- CoffeeCoffee is a beverage brewed from roasted, ground coffee beans, darkly colored, bitter, and slightly acidic. It carries a stimulating effect on humans, owed…
- Nonfood cropNonfood crops are plants grown not for the dinner table but for the factory floor. Wheat, which most people know as bread, can also become building…
- FlaxFlax, known to botanists as Linum usitatissimum, carries a name that translates from Latin as "most useful", and the plant has spent thousands of years…
- CropCrop is a word so ordinary it barely registers, yet the plants it names feed every person alive. In 2023, global production of primary crops reached 9.9…
- Lime (fruit)Lime is a fruit that shows up in margaritas, ceviche, Persian stews, and Australian marmalade. It prevents scurvy, it burns skin in sunlight, and it comes in…
- TurnipThe turnip, known scientifically as Brassica rapa subsp. rapa, reached Japan by the year 700 CE - a quiet milestone for a vegetable that had already spent…
- AsparagusAsparagus has been on the human menu since at least the 1st century AD, when a Roman cookbook recorded how to cook it. Emperor Augustus himself is said to…
- Natural rubberNatural rubber begins as a sticky, milky, white fluid that bleeds from a cut in tree bark. Tappers collect it drop by drop into vessels, a process they call…
- CerealCereal is a grass, grown not for its leaves or flowers but for its edible grain. These grasses are the world's largest crops by tonnage, which makes them…