Curated category
Medicinal plants
- Cannabis (drug)Cannabis is one of the 483 known compounds bundled inside a single plant, and the one that matters most to its users is a molecule called…
- MangoMango is the national fruit of three countries simultaneously: India, Pakistan, and the Philippines. That single fact hints at something unusual.
- PlumPlum sits at the oldest intersection of human hunger and cultivation. Before grain fields spread across the ancient world, before olive groves lined…
- FraxinusFraxinus, the genus we call ash, is one of the most quietly consequential trees on earth. Its wood bent into the handles of axes.
- CinnamonCinnamon was imported to Egypt as early as 2000 BC, yet for centuries no one in the Mediterranean world knew where it came from.
- ElmElm trees once lined nearly every great boulevard in the Western world. From the cathedral arches of American elm canopy along the National Mall in…
- OatOats, known scientifically as Avena sativa, may be the most underestimated grain on Earth. Samuel Johnson, writing his famous 1755 Dictionary of the English…
- ParsleyParsley, or garden parsley, carries the scientific name Petroselinum crispum, and it has been quietly anchoring kitchens across Europe, the Middle East, and…
- CannabisCannabis is a genus of flowering plants with a history stretching back roughly 12,000 years, to the early Neolithic period in East Asia.
- OpiumOpium is the dried latex drawn from the seed capsules of a single plant, Papaver somniferum. It is also known by a poetic Latin name: Lachryma papaveris, the…
- ThymeThyme is one of the oldest herbs in recorded human history, and its story stretches from ancient Egyptian burial chambers to the inside of your medicine…
- CoconutCoconut, Cocos nucifera, may be the single plant most responsible for human civilizations reaching distant shores. The Austronesian peoples who crossed open…
- GingerGinger, the plant formally known as Zingiber officinale, has been present at some of history's most significant human crossings.
- NutmegNutmeg sits in the back of spice racks across the world, shaken over eggnog and stirred into pumpkin pie, but few people who use it know that it once changed…
- BlackberryBlackberry holds a remarkable distinction among fruits: it is not actually a berry at all. What most people call a blackberry is botanically an aggregate…