Curated category
Root vegetables
- CarrotCarrot is one of the most familiar vegetables on earth, yet its story reaches back thousands of years to the mountain ranges of Central Asia, where ancient…
- 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.
- PotatoThe potato is a starchy tuber that pre-Columbian farmers domesticated around Lake Titicaca between roughly 7,000 and 10,000 years ago.
- CassavaCassava feeds more than 800 million people worldwide. It is the third-largest source of carbohydrates in the tropics, sitting behind only rice and maize.
- 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.
- ParsleyParsley, or garden parsley, carries the scientific name Petroselinum crispum, and it has been quietly anchoring kitchens across Europe, the Middle East, and…
- Sweet potatoThe sweet potato, Ipomoea batatas, carries a name that is older than written history and a journey that crossed entire oceans before Europeans had any idea…
- TyphaTypha is a genus of about 30 species of flowering plants that most people have seen without knowing the name. You might call them cattails, bulrushes…
- RadishA German botanist in 1544 claimed to have seen radishes weighing 100 pounds and stretching roughly 3 feet long. That report sounds like a tall tale.
- TurnipThe turnip, known scientifically as Brassica rapa subsp. rapa, reached Japan by the year 700 CE - a quiet milestone for a vegetable that had already spent…