Curated playlist
Plants described in 1753
- 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.
- PeachThe peach is named for Persia, yet every thread of its origin leads back to China.
- GarlicAncient Greeks left garlic on piles of stones at crossroads as supper for the goddess Hecate.
- PapayaPapaya's white sap can tenderize meat, but it also stops jelly from setting. The enzyme papain is the reason.
- PotatoMore than 99% of modern potato varieties come from Chile's lowlands, not Peru's highlands.
- RyePliny the Elder called rye a "very poor food", but northern peoples built food cultures on it.
- OnionThe onion has been grown for at least 7,000 years, yet no wild ancestor has ever been found.
- 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.
- SpinachSpinach is no richer in iron than many other vegetables. Popeye's canned-spinach strength is an academic urban legend.
- Phaseolus vulgarisFour or five raw, soaked kidney beans can make a person sick.
- Black pepperBlack pepper was found stuffed in the nostrils of Ramesses II. It was placed there during his mummification rituals.
- CucumberRoman gardeners grew cucumbers on wheeled beds so Emperor Tiberius could have them daily.
- CoconutEvery coconut on a remote Pacific island arrived because a person brought it. Ocean currents alone could not do it.
- FlaxFlax fibers spun and knotted about 30,000 years ago are the oldest known worked plant fiber.
- CuminAncient Greeks kept cumin at the table in its own container, like pepper today. The habit still survives in Morocco.
- ChickpeaChickpeas were already being grown roughly ten thousand years ago. The oldest evidence comes from Syria.
- Common wheatTall wheat given heavy chemical fertilizer collapsed under its own grain. Norman Borlaug's dwarfing genes fixed it.
- 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…
- Gossypium barbadenseOne mild winter in 1785 let Georgia planters finally grow Sea Island cotton.
- Date palmThe date palm, Phoenix dactylifera, has grown seven trees named Methuselah, Hannah, Adam, Judith, Boaz, Jonah and Uriel. Each one sprouted from a seed about 2000 years old that had been stored by accident. The seeds came from a cultivar…
- 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.
- 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,…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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,…