In its narrow, everyday use, vegetable is a word indicating any herb that is cultivated specially for table use in whole or part, such as the turnip (root), cabbage (leaves), broccoli (flowers), peas and beans (fruit). In its widest sense it includes all living things that are not animals - trees, shrubs, herbs, ferns, mosses, seaweeds, fungi, and the microscopic diatoms.
The unit of structure, the cell, is essentially the same in both animals and plants, but the combination of the cells into tissues and organs shows marked differences.
All animals depend for their food upon material originally elaborated by plants. The green plants alone have the power to construct this basic food material from elemental substances, and physiological processes different from those of animal assimilation are rendered necessary. The fungi approach the animals in this respect: they must feed upon material that has already done service as part of the structure of other plants or of animals.
The fine divisions of roots explore the soil in search of water in which are dissolved the salts of sodium, iron, potassium, phosphorus, calcium, sulphur, etc. The hairs with which the rootlets are clothed absorb this fluid by osmosis, and it is passed upward through the long vessels of the wood bundles until it reaches the cells of the leaf. These cells contain green bodies (chloroplasts) in their protoplasm, and it is these that impart the green colour to leaves and soft shoots. In the leaf-skin (epidermis) there are innumerable pores or stomata through which surplus water from the roots is evaporated and through which atmospheric air is admitted to the spaces between the leaf-cells.
The chloroplasts in these cells have the power to utilise solar energy in decomposing the carbon dioxide of the air, and the cells retain the carbon, setting free the oxygen. Water from the roots is broken up also into its elements, hydrogen and oxygen, and with these plus carbonstarch is formed. This, converted into grape sugar, is passed from cell to cell to parts of the plant whore it is needed for the production of new cells, wood, bark, leaves, or fruit. Starch is the material from which are made all the organic substances produced by the plant.
The surplus over present requirements is stored up as reserves in seeds, enlarged roots or stems, bulbs, or tubers for renewed growth or floral display at a later season. Waste products are converted into resins, oils/wax, or alkaloids - many of these being of considerable economic value to man. Part of the water stream from the roots passes by osmosis from cell to cell, where it is necessary in order to keep the protoplasm in an active condition; any insufficiency is followed by a flagging of the tissues, the drooping of leaves and young shoots. In addition to the absorption of carbon by the protoplasts for building purposes, the leaf-cells also take up oxygen from the atmosphere and give off carbon much as animals do.
As the plant respires without lungs and assimilates without digestive organs, so also it can effect movements without a muscular system and react to external stimuli without a nervous system. It is sensitive to light and heat; many plants have distinct night and day positions for their leaves. It responds positively and negatively to the force of gravity, the root going down into the earth and the stem rising into the air. The growing tip of a stem or shoot commonly nutates, i.e. moves from side to side or in a circle or ellipse. The plant can orientate itself, i.e. take up a definite position in regard to the incidence of light or other external stimulus. These movements appear to be controlled largely by alterations in the position of the mobile chloroplasts.
The reproductive process is, in essentials, similar to that of animals, the ovules or seed-eggs in the ovary requiring to be fertilised by male sperms represented by the pollen grains produced in the anthers. The result of such fertilisation is to cause the ovule to develop into an embryo capable of further development under suitable conditions into a plant resembling the parent. Research Vegetable
Alliaria is a genus of plant of the family Cruciferae, containing two species, one of which Alliaria officinalis, commonly called jack-by-the-hedge, is widely spread in Europe, and often used as a pot-herb. Research Alliaria
American wormseed (Chenopodium ambrosioides) or Mexican tea as it is also known, is a poisonous annual herb of the family Chenopodiaceae with a branched, reddish, leafy stem. The leaves are alternate and rectangular to lanceolate and coarsely toothed. The numerous small yellowish-green flowers are crowded together in small globose clusters in the leaf axils on the lateral stems. The fruit is an achene. American wormseed was introduced to Europe from tropical America during the 17th century, and acclimatized itself to some parts of Europe, but not Britain. In South America the leaves were formerly used to make an infusion of tea, but the principal use of the plant was in medicine to expel intestinal worms. Research American Wormseed
Angular Solomon's seal (Polygonatum odoratum) is a poisonous perennialherb of the family Liliaceae native to Britain, occurring in northern and western England and rarely in Wales. It has a thick, white, creeping rhizome and angled, arched stems, which bear numerous alternate, ovate to elliptic leaves in two rows. The flowers are white in colour, drooping, fragrant and tubular and grow singly or in pairs from the leaf axils. The fruit is a dark-blue berry. Research Angular Solomon's Seal
Aniseed or anise (Pimpinella anisum) is an annual herb of the family Umbelliferae, native to the eastern Mediterranean region, with an erect, branched, ribbed stem, which bears long-stalked, lobed, cordate and coarsely toothed lower leaves and finely divided, feathery, ternate or pinnate upper leaves. The flowers are small, white in colour and arranged in compound umbels. The fruit is a ribbed, roundish double achene. Aniseed was first cultivated and used as a spice by the ancient Egyptians and later by the Greeks and Romans. Research Aniseed
Balm or lemon balm (Melissa officinalis) is a perennialherb of the family Labiate with a short rhizome and an erect, much-branched square stem. The leaves are opposite, stalked, ovate, yellow green and crenate. The flowers are small, two-lipped and grow in whorls in the upper leaf axils. The flowers change colour as they mature from pale yellow through white to pale blue. The fruit consists of four smooth nutlets. All parts of the plant are finely hairy and have a strong lemon scent. Research Balm
The banana is a perennialherb cultivated in tropical and sub tropical climates. Bananas are fast-growing, arising from underground rhizomes. The fleshy stalks or pseudostems formed by upright concentric layers of leaf sheaths constitute the functional trunks. The true stem begins as an underground corm which grows upwards, pushing its way out through the centre of the stalk 10 to 15 months after planting, eventually producing the terminal inflorescence which will later bear the fruit. Each stalk produces one huge flowercluster and then dies. New stalks then grow from the rhizome. The large rectangular or elliptic leaf blades are extensions of the sheaths of the pseudostem and are joined to them by fleshy, deeply grooved, short petioles. The leaves unfurl, as the plant grows, at the rate of one per week in warm weather, and extend upward and outward , becoming as much as 2.5 metres long and 0.75 metres wide. They may be entirely green, green with maroon patches, or green on the upper side and red-purple beneath. The leaf veins run from the mid-rib straight to the outer edge of the leaf. Even when the wind shreds the leaf, the veins are still able to function. Approximately 44 leaves will appear before the inflorescence. The banana inflorescence shooting out from the heart in the tip of the stem, is at first a large, long-oval, tapering, purple-clad bud. As it opens, the slim, nectar-rich, tubular, toothed, white flowers appear. They are clustered in whorled double rows along the floral stalk, each cluster covered by a thick, waxy, hood like bract, purple outside and deep red within.
The flowers occupying the first five to fifteen rows are female. As the rachis of the inflorescence continues to elongate, sterile flowers with abortive male and female parts appear, followed by normal staminate ones with abortive ovaries. The two latter flower types eventually drop in most edible bananas. The ovaries contained in the first (female) flowers grow rapidly, developing parthenocarpically into clusters of fruits, called hands. The number of hands varies with the species and variety.
The fruit (technically a berry) turns from deep green to yellow or red, and may range from ten centimetres to thirty centimetres in length and two centimetres to five centimetres in diameter. The flesh, ivory-white to yellow or salmon-yellow, may be firm, astringent, even gummy with latex when unripe, turning tender and slippery, or soft and mellow or rather dry and mealy or starchy when ripe. The flavour may be mild and sweet or slightly acid with a distinct appletone. The common cultivated types are generally seedless with just vestiges of ovules visible as brown specks. Occasionally, cross-pollination with wild types will result in a number of seeds in a normally seedless variety. Research Banana
Basil are various herbaceous plants of the family Labiatae. Sweet basil (Ocimum basilicum) is a native of India, and is an aromatic annual herb with a square branched stem, and numerous opposite, stalked, ovate, slightly toothed and glabrous leaves, often reddish in colour. The flowers are small, white, yellow or pink in colour and arranged in whorls in the upper leaf axils. The young leaves are used in cooking. Research Basil
Belladonna (Atropa belladonna) or deadly nightshade (also known as dwale) as it is also known, is a highly poisonous European, native in Britain, perennialherb of the natural order Solanaceae with a large, turnip-like root and spreading, branched stems from which atropine is derived. The large, soft, oval leaves are alternate or opposite where a flower arises. The flowers are stalked, bell-shaped and reddish-brown and grow singularly from the leaf axils. The fruit is a black, glossy, conspicuous berry cupped by the spreading sepals. Belladonna is found in hedges, woods and thickets and on wasteland, especially where the soil is rich in lime.
The inspissated juice is commonly known by the name of extract of belladonna. It is narcotic and poisonous, but is of great value in medicine, especially in nervous ailments. It has the property of causing the pupil of the eye to dilate. Deadly nightshade became known as belladonna (Italian for beautiful lady) after the practice of women using the plant as a cosmetic to enlarge their pupils and beautify their eyes. Research Belladonna
Betony (Stachys Betonica or Betonica Officinalis), also known as Wood Betony and Hedge Nettle is a Labiate British perennialherb with an erect, square, usually unbranched and furrowed stem and purple flowers which grows in woods. It was once used extensively in medicine and may be used to dye wool a dark-yellow colour. Research Betony
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Vegetable
