Curated playlist
Fruit vegetables
- TomatoIn 1893, the US Supreme Court ruled the tomato a vegetable. Botanically, it is a fruit, a berry.
- MaizeMaize cannot reproduce without people. Its kernels stay locked to the cob instead of scattering.
- PeaThe word pea comes from a mistake: English speakers took pease for a plural and dropped the s.
- Cooking bananaCooking bananas feed more than 70 million people across Africa alone. They are starchy and largely inedible raw.
- CucumberRoman gardeners grew cucumbers on wheeled beds so Emperor Tiberius could have them daily.
- PumpkinThe carved Halloween pumpkin began as a carved turnip. Irish and Scottish lanterns used turnips before pumpkins.
- EggplantEggplant, known to science as Solanum melongena, carries a different name depending on who is talking. North Americans, Australians and Filipinos say eggplant. The British, Irish and New Zealanders say aubergine. Across India, Bangladesh,…
- CalabashA calabash gourd grown in Taylorsville, Kentucky, in 2001 weighed 111.5 kilograms. That single fruit hints at the range of Lagenaria siceraria, the vine known as the calabash or the bottle gourd. Its fruits can be huge and round, small and…
- ChayoteChayote is an edible fruiting vine of the gourd family, and in Brazil its local name doubles as a pet name. Chuchu is the Brazilian word for the fruit, and it is also a term of endearment, much like calling someone "Honey" in English. The…
- JalapeñoThe jalapeño takes its name from Xalapa, the capital city of Veracruz, Mexico, yet the pepper is not grown in or around that city. Popular belief gets this wrong, and the mismatch is only the first oddity. The jalapeño is a medium-sized…