Curated playlist
Plants used in Native American cuisine
- CorianderCoriander, known to botanists as Coriandrum sativum, is an annual herb in the family Apiaceae, and it splits dinner tables in two. For most people, a fresh leaf tastes bright, with a faint citrus edge. For others, the very same leaf tastes…
- OnionThe onion has been grown for at least 7,000 years, yet no wild ancestor has ever been found.
- Sweet potatoSweet potatoes were in Polynesia centuries before any European ship arrived.
- HickoryHickory trees once grew across the whole Northern Hemisphere. Ice erased the genus from Europe entirely.
- BlackberryA blackberry is not actually a berry. Botanically it is a cluster of small drupelets, each with its own ovule.
- BlueberryEvery commercial blueberry in the world comes from a plant native to North America. Peru is now among the top growers.
- OpuntiaOpuntia is a genus of flowering plants in the cactus family Cactaceae, and most people know it as the prickly pear. Cacti are native to the Americas and suited to arid climates, though shifts in rainfall and temperature driven by climate…
- PopcornPopcorn kernels can swell to 20 to 50 times their original size when heated. The word covers both a special variety of corn and the snack that comes out of it. Evidence of popcorn reaches back thousands of years in the Americas, which…
- SumacSumac was packed into the cargo of an 11th-century ship that sank off the coast of Rhodes. Archaeologists excavated the wreck in the 1970s and found commercial quantities of sumac drupes aboard. No one can say what the merchants intended.…
- AcornThe acorn, the nut of the oak, takes anywhere from 5 to 24 months to ripen, depending on the species. That is a long wait for a seed that so many hungry creatures are ready to eat. Yet the wait is part of a bargain between a tree and…