Cereals, Fruits, Nuts & Vegetables
While some plants are renowned for their aesthetic beauty or for their usefulness in creating medicines and products such as dyes and soaps, many plants are equally celebrated for their tastiness. Edible plants, when eaten, provide humans and other animals with the nutrients needed to supply energy and support growth. This holds true even for plants that may initially sound less than appetizing to some, like wax gourds, prickly pears, and chokecherries. Look to this category for information on these and other veggies, fruits, legumes, nuts, and grains.
Cereals, Fruits, Nuts & Vegetables Encyclopedia Articles
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peanut
Peanut, (Arachis hypogaea), legume of the pea family (Fabaceae), grown for its edible seeds. Native to tropical South America, the peanut was at an early time introduced to the Old World tropics. The seeds...
avocado
Avocado, (Persea americana), tree of the family Lauraceae and its edible fruit. Avocados are native to the Western Hemisphere from Mexico south to the Andean regions and are widely grown in warm climates....
tomato
Tomato, (Solanum lycopersicum), flowering plant of the nightshade family (Solanaceae), cultivated extensively for its edible fruits. Labelled as a vegetable for nutritional purposes, tomatoes are a good...
eggplant
Eggplant, (Solanum melongena), tender perennial plant of the nightshade family (Solanaceae), grown for its edible fruits. Eggplant requires a warm climate and has been cultivated in its native Southeast...
carrot
Carrot, (Daucus carota), herbaceous, generally biennial plant of the Apiaceae family that produces an edible taproot. Among common varieties root shapes range from globular to long, with lower ends blunt...
barley
Barley, (Hordeum vulgare), cereal plant of the grass family Poaceae and its edible grain. Grown in a variety of environments, barley is the fourth largest grain crop globally, after wheat, rice, and corn....