Curated playlist
Plants described in 1753
- TomatoIn 1893, the United States Supreme Court had to decide what a tomato was. On the 10th of May that year, in a case called Nix v. Hedden, the justices ruled that for the purposes of the Tariff of 1883, the tomato counted as a vegetable.…
- MaizeMaize relies on humans to survive. Its kernels stay locked to the cob, unlike its wild ancestor teosinte, whose seeds scatter to the ground on their own. Left alone in a field, a corncob would simply rot where it fell. This is a plant that…
- PeachThe peach, Prunus persica, carries a name that points to Persia, yet every thread of its origin leads back to China. That mismatch between name and birthplace is just the beginning of a story that stretches from Neolithic riverbanks to…
- GarlicGarlic, known to botanists as Allium sativum, was placed by ancient Greeks on piles of stones at crossroads as a supper for the goddess Hecate. That single ritual captures something true about this plant: for thousands of years, it has…
- PapayaPapaya is a plant that feeds millions, and yet most people in temperate countries barely know what it is. Picture a tree standing between 5 and 10 metres tall, its lower trunk carved with the scars of leaves and fruit it once held, a crown…
- PotatoThe potato is a starchy tuber that pre-Columbian farmers domesticated around Lake Titicaca between roughly 7,000 and 10,000 years ago. They worked from a wild species in the S. brevicaule complex, in what is now southern Peru and…
- RyeRye, known to botanists as Secale cereale, is a grass that has fed northern civilizations through climates that defeat nearly every other grain. The Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder dismissed it as a "very poor food" that "only serves to…
- 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. Nobody can point to a wild plant in some forgotten valley and say: that is where it all…
- OatOats, known scientifically as Avena sativa, may be the most underestimated grain on Earth. Samuel Johnson, writing his famous 1755 Dictionary of the English Language, defined oats as a grain which in England is generally given to horses…
- PeaThe pea has fed civilisations for at least ten thousand years. Seeds showing domesticated characteristics have been unearthed at archaeological sites around what is now Turkey, and the crop's reach was already global long before anyone…
- SpinachSpinach is not a better source of dietary iron than many other vegetables. That fact would surprise the cartoon sailor Popeye, who has spent decades downing canned spinach and flexing his forearms to the lyric "I'm strong to the finich,…
- Phaseolus vulgarisPhaseolus vulgaris, the common bean, carries a remarkable secret in its raw form: eating just four or five uncooked, soaked kidney beans is enough to cause nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea within one to three hours. That toxin, a lectin…
- Black pepperBlack pepper was found stuffed into the nostrils of Ramesses II, placed there during the mummification rituals that followed his death in 1213 BCE. How a dried fruit from the Malabar Coast of India reached the Nile remains largely unknown.…
- CucumberThe cucumber, known to botanists as Cucumis sativus, is 95% water. That single fact hides a much stranger story. This creeping vine in the family Cucurbitaceae has been cultivated for at least 3,000 years, and somewhere along the way it…
- CoconutCoconut, Cocos nucifera, may be the single plant most responsible for human civilizations reaching distant shores. The Austronesian peoples who crossed open ocean to settle half the world brought this palm with them as a living supply…
- 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 earning that title. In a cave in what is now the Republic of Georgia, archaeologists…
- CuminCumin has been sitting on human tables for thousands of years. The ancient Greeks kept it at the dining table in its own container, much as pepper is kept today, and that same habit survives in Morocco right now. What draws people across…
- ChickpeaChickpea, known scientifically as Cicer arietinum, is one of the oldest cultivated plants on earth, and the oldest archaeological evidence of it was found in Syria. Long before writing, before bronze, before the wheel became widespread,…
- Common wheatCommon wheat, Triticum aestivum, is the single most widely grown crop on earth. It accounts for roughly 95% of all wheat produced worldwide, and of every cereal grown for human use, it generates the highest monetary yield. Those numbers…
- Indigofera tinctoriaIndigofera tinctoria, the plant known as true indigo, once colored the robes of emperors and the canvas of European masters. It is a modest shrub, rarely taller than two meters, with light green leaves and small pink or violet flowers. Yet…
- Gossypium barbadenseSeven thousand eight hundred years ago, people along the coast of what is now Ecuador and Peru were already using Gossypium barbadense. Archaeologists have traced this back through seeds found on the floors of ancient houses. That same…
- Hyoscyamus nigerHyoscyamus niger, the plant the medieval world called henbane, carries a name that dates back to AD 1265 and translates, essentially, to "thing that causes death". Yet for thousands of years, across Europe, Asia, and the Arab world, people…
- Ficus religiosaFicus religiosa, the sacred fig, holds a distinction shared by almost no other plant on earth: it is venerated across four major religions simultaneously. Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Jainism all trace their origins to the Indian…
- Juglans regiaJuglans regia goes by many names: common walnut, English walnut, Persian walnut. None of them quite captures what this tree actually is. Its Latin name translates as "Jupiter's royal acorn," a title bestowed by the Romans who spread it…
- Angelica archangelicaDuring its first year, the plant grows only leaves. In the second year, a fluted stem reaches 2.5 meters in height. This is just over eight feet of vertical growth. The root serves as the primary source for flavoring preparations. Leaves…