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You are what you eat

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You Are What You Eat

When is a vegetable not a vegetable?

Most of the time, actually. I was recently horrified when my flatmate was surprised to find out that aubergine (eggplant) is actually a fruit, and not a 'vegetable', whatever that means. Here, for the greater good and knowledge of humankind, is an exhaustive (well, it exhausted me) list of all the things made from plants you're ever likely to meet and eat, and what they actually are.

The first thing I'll clear up is that 'vegetable' is pretty much meaningless: it's not the opposite of fruit (as the aubergine thing clearly demonstrates), and it's not the opposite of plants you eat for pudding (carrot cake, courgette cake, rocket and raspberry salad, etc.), and it's not savoury plant products either (sweetcorn). Vegetable doesn't really seem to mean anything, so we will have to leave the cosy world of fruit and vegetables, and get our heads round some botanical concepts, like the difference between a leaf and a flower, and acquaint ourselves with some frightening Latin words.

Leaves

Leaves are the light harvesting organs of a plant, and they are usually, but not always, flat and flappy. There are lots of vegetables that are clearly leaves, or mostly leaves with a bit of wayward stem. For starters, there are hundreds of varieties of cabbage (including all the obscure ones like bok choi and kale), hundreds of sorts of lettuce, and rather a lot of spinaches. Cabbages (Brassica oleracea) are unsurprisingly members of the cabbage family (Brassicaceae), as are mustard, kale, broccoli, rocket, canola (rapeseed), horseradish, cauliflowers, radishes, mooli/daikon, and turnips. Lettuces (Lactuca sativa) are a sort of daisy (family Asteraceae), like sunflowers, endives, chicory, Jerusalem artichokes, and many ornamentals. Spinach (Spinacina oleracea), along with Good King Henry, fat-hen, chard, beetroots and mangelwurzels are goosefeet (Amaranthaceae, formerly Chenopodiaceae).

Amongst the other edible leaves, we find chives (a member of the onion/lily family, Lilaceae) and vine leaves, which are used to make dolmades. Mostly leaves, but with a lot of stem thrown in for good measure, are watercress and nettle. Nettles are edible, but you need to boil them first.

As well as leaves for food, we also use a lot of leaves as herbs for flavouring. Many of these are members of the mint family (Lamiaceae), for example, mint, basil, marjoram, rosemary, oregano, sage, hyssop, savoury, lemon balm, and thyme.

Another family renown for its flavourful leaves is the carrot family (Apiaceae). This family contains most of the 'aniseedy' smelling plants like fennel, lovage, chervil, cicely, coriander, dill, celery and parsley, most of the spices with small, sickle shaped seeds, like cumin, fennel and caraway, and several pointy root vegetables, like carrots and parsnips. Some other notable edible leaves are tarragon, tea, bay, pandanus and lime leaves.

There are a few 'vegetables' that are actually just the leaf stalks of a plant, technically called the petiole. Celery is a fairly obvious example, as is rhubarb, whose leaves are rather less edible. Cardoon is the edible leaf stalks of a sort of artichoke (which are basically thistles). Leeks, lemon-grass and spring onions are also mostly leaf stalk (in fact, as monocots, they don't really have true leaf blades like broad-leaved plants). Fennel 'bulbs' are not really bulbs, but the bases of the leaf stalks of the fennel herb. Angelica is the candied leaf stalk of yet another relative of the carrot.

Stems and buds

Stems are supposed to be the bit of a plant that hold up the leaves, but nature has subverted them to many other purposes too. There aren't that many notable edible above-ground stems, all I can think of are samphire and asparagus, which both lack true leaves, so by definition are just swollen stems.

There are several sorts of underground stem which plants use as storage organs, and which we then pilfer. Ginger (Zingiber officinale), galangal, kratchai and turmeric are all closely related, and are rhizomes, which are a sort of horizontal underground stem, as are arrowroot and Jerusalem artichokes. On the other hand, vertically growing underground stems are called corms, and include taro, celeriac, water chestnuts (most definitely not nuts) and eddoes. The leaves of the last are the tropical vegetable called dasheen. Kohlrabi, a weird sort of cabbage, is sort of swollen stem, but isn't really a corm, and I'm not sure what you should call it, to be honest. A fleshy hypocotyl?

Surprisingly, potatoes (Solanum tuberosum) are also swollen stems, not roots, as is commonly assumed. They just happen to grow underground. Such swollen underground stems are called stem tubers: they differ from rhizomes in that the growing end isn't out of the soil. Trying to pigeonhole the variety in the natural world is always a laugh, isn't it? Potatoes are closely related to tomatoes (and tobaccos, whose leaves are of interest) in the nightshade family (Solanaceae). Seed potatoes are small tubers, not seeds at all: most potatoes are sterile tetraploids.

Although we don't eat that many sorts of stem, we do use them as sources of fibre for paper, clothing and rope (flax, jute and hemp: sisal is extracted from the leaves of an Agave). We also use stems as construction material (wood and bamboo, the latter are the stems of a giant grass) and to produce sugar (likewise, extracted from a giant grass). The repulsive slop known as sago is the starch extracted from the trunk of a cycad, Cycas revoluta or a palm.

Buds are the tightly packed leaves at the top of a stem. This is another group we rarely eat: bamboo shoots, chicory and banana buds are rather obscure examples, and Brussels sprouts are the axilliary buds of a sort of cabbage. However, we do eat many bulbs, which are merely swollen underground buds used as storage and overwintering organs. Onion (Allium cepa) and garlic are the commonly encountered members of this group. Both belong to the same family as leeks and chives, the Lilaceae.

Flowers

There aren't that many edible flowers to be honest, and certainly not many that are not mere 'flavourings'. Of the few chunky edible flowers, two varieties of cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower, are barely recognisable as inflorescences (bunches of flowers) after years of selective breeding. Rather more recognisable are the courgette (zucchini) flowers that are eaten (petals-and-nascent-courgette-and-all) widely in the Mediterranean. Most of the other edible flowers are really just flavourings: few would want to eat kilograms of borage, which is also one of the few edible blue things, pansies, hops, rose petals, nasturtium, or lavender. Some flowers aren't even allowed to bloom before they are cruelly cut down and eaten: cloves are the dried flower buds of a tropical bush, globe artichokes are the unopened buds of a giant thistle and capers are pickled flower buds of a Mediterranean plant. The most expensive spice of all, saffron, is even more obscure: it's the stigmata (part of the female reproductive organs) of a variety of crocus (Crocus sativus), and is more expensive, weight-for-weight, than gold. I suppose we can't forget honey either, which is a mixture of flower nectar and bee spit.

Roots

Most of the root vegetables, are, you'll be relived to know, actually roots. The long tap roots of radish and mooli, yam, cassava, parsnip and carrot, liquorice, horseradish and wasabi, swede and turnip, lotus, beetroot, sugarbeet and mangels store starches and sugars for hard times, and we happily give these plants a hard time by uprooting and eating them.

Sweet potatoes are actually a sort of morning glory (Ipomoea batatas): the bit we eat is a root tuber, a swollen lateral root.

Obscure things

Before we get onto the thousand sorts of fruit and seed we eat, it's worth noting a few of the more obscure bits of plants we eat. Arils are a fleshy outgrowth from a seed that is not technically a fruit: mace is the aril of nutmeg seeds.

Seedlings are another uncommon food: the shoots of seedling plants (the plumule) is what mustard-and-cress is, and the roots of seedlings (the radicle) is what mung beansprouts mostly are. Bark is another thing that doesn't sound too edible, but cinnamon and cassia are exactly this. Maple syrup is the concentrated sap of maple trees, and chewing gum is ultimately made from a juice of similar provenance from rubber trees.

The storage protein from the seeds of soybeans is responsible for an enormous variety of products: a watery solution of this protein is called soy milk, a cheesy precipitate from this milk is tofu, and various fermented products derived from the same source include miso, soy sauce and tempeh.

Fermentation itself is often done by yeast, which is a single celled fungus, Saccharomyces cerevisiae (not a plant). More sizable fungi include all the various mushrooms. Most of the edible fungi are basidiomycetes, hence most mushrooms are basidiocarps. There are not many edible ascomycetes: morels, truffles and yeast are the notable exceptions. Quorn is a fibrous gunk derived from the mould Fusarium. Relatives of this fungus are also responsible for penicillin (Penicillium), and most commercial citric acid (Aspergillus), since it's cheaper to grow than lemons.

Keeping with the 'not only not vegetables, but not even technically plants' theme, we have the seaweeds or algae: the bit you eat of nori, kombu, wakame and so on, is called the thallus by phycologists. A polysaccharide extracted from a sort of red alga is the vegetable gelatine agar.

From flowering plants, we extract a number of resins, such as asafoetida, mastic and hashish, and the seeds and fruits of a number of plants supply us with fibres: cotton and kapok are the fluff from seeds, and coir is the rather coarser fibre that surrounds coconut seeds, and can be used for matting and as a peat substitute.

Fruits

Fruits and seeds are where the most unpleasant identification surprises for the non-botanist lurk. Botanists love making up long Latin names for names for fruits, most of which are very confusing, and completely at odds with the English names of the things they describe. In particular, the words nut, berry, seed and fruit mean quite different things to botanists than to the average supermarket shopper. When a flower dies and starts to produce seed, the remains of the female parts of the flower mature into a fruit. A single female part is called an ovary, and it will usually contain one or more ovules. The ovary wall will eventually mature into a fruit, and the ovules inside are what will eventually become the seeds. The confusion between seeds and fruits arises because many ovaries develop into tight, dry casings around a single seed, and to all intents and purposes, the entire fruit looks just like a seed. However, these fruits (sunflower 'seeds' being a good example), are not really seeds, but small, dry, single-seeded fruits. Even more confusingly, many 'fruits' either contain tissue that was nothing to do with the ovary of a flower (like apples and strawberries), or are the remains of not just one flower, but a big mass of flowers, and all the extraneous tissue that goes with this (pineapples and figs being good examples). These 'fruits' are not true fruits at all, but accessory fruits, or pseudocarps. The upshot is that seeds are the products of ovules, fruits the products of ovaries, and pseudocarps the product of anything else. Bear this in mind.

Most of the things you think of as seeds are actually small, dry fruits. However, there are a few exceptions. In particular, the pine trees and their relatives (gymnosperms) never make flowers or ovaries, so by definition, they cannot produce fruits. Their seeds are borne naked on scale leaves, which are sometimes arranged in neat whorls called cones (strobili). Pine kernels and Areca 'nuts' are actually naked seeds from plants such as these, and ginkgo 'nuts' are similarly naked seeds, but with a tough outer coat. Seeds of gymnosperms often produce coatings around themselves that are not part of the ovary itself: these outgrowths are arils, and the red 'berry' of the yew tree is the most obvious example. Strangely enough, juniper 'berries' are actually the fleshy cones of the juniper bush, which are used to flavour gin.

Seeds, achenes and nuts

Some fruits are dry, and some fruits are fleshy. Simple dry fruits that don't split open when they ripen are called achenes: sunflower 'seeds' being the example I already mentioned. So too are hemp 'seeds'. The grains (caryopses) of rice, wheat, barley, maize, millet, sorghum and oats are also achenes, but the outer husk is the remains of the flower, and these fruits can also be classified as pseudocarps. Corncobs are also pseudocarps: the core down the middle is a stem, and the whole corncob is therefore both a multiple fruit and a pseudocarp (and you foolishly thought it was a vegetable, didn't you?). Similarly, the paired 'seeds' of coriander, cumin, fennel, aniseed, caraway and dill are also small dry pseudocarps, called cremocarps, which are characteristic of the carrot family (Apiaceae).

Some dry fruits contain more than one seed in an air space, these are the various sorts of capsule. Some of the seeds we eat originated in capsules (or long, thin capsules called follicles), including poppy seed, nigella, buckwheat (actually a relative of rhubarb, and not a wheat at all), sesame, mustard and rape (canola) seeds (from a special sort of capsule called a silique), and Brazil 'nuts'. Brazil 'nuts' are actually huge seeds with very tough outer seed coats, which drop off the tree in even tougher outer capsules: the Brazil 'nuts' form something like the segments of an orange inside this woody capsule.

There are also a few edible capsules, like star anise, cardamom, vanilla 'pods', and okra, the last of these is the fruit of a sort of hibiscus. Peppers and chillies are a borderline case between a damp capsule and a dry berry.

A special sort of capsule, which splits in half when ripe, is the legume, or pod. This is the typical fruit of the bean family (Fabaceae). We mostly only eat the seeds of the various peas, beans and lentils (peanuts are a sort of pea, not a sort of nut, by the way), but we do eat the whole (often immature) pods of carob, tamarind, mange-tout, snow peas, runner beans and some others.

Large, dry fruits, where the fruit is just a hard, woody shell around a single oily seed are called nuts. Most of the things you call nuts aren't actually nuts at all. Many of the true nuts come in a papery or spiny husk of some sort, called an involucre, which is a whorl of modified leaves around a flower. The real nuts are hazels, filberts, acorns, chestnuts, beech mast and cashews, the last of which is harvested from the tree on the end of a cashew 'apple', which is a fleshy receptacle.

Drupes

Most of the other things you think of as nuts are actually the innermost part of a kind of fruit called a drupe. Drupes are fleshy fruits that have an outer rind (the exocarp), surrounding a fleshy or fibrous mesocarp, with a very hard inner stone (the endocarp) which surrounds the seed(s) itself. The obvious example here is the peach (skin=exocarp, flesh=mesocarp, stone=endocarp, kernel=seed), and many of the other edible drupes are from the same genus (Prunus), including apricots, bullace, greengages, jujubes, cherries, plums, sloes, damsons and nectarines; or from its close relative Sorbus: service fruit and rowans. We eat only the fleshy mesocarp of these fruits.

We also eat the mesocarp of the drupes (or drupe-like fruits) of the date palm, avocado, rose apple, olive, mango, lychee, rambutan and longan (technically the edible part of the latter three are arils rather than mesocarps). Almonds, on the other hand, are the seeds from inside the endocarp of a fluffy green plum: here we eat the seeds themselves, and chuck the fruit away. Sometimes, you can get almonds still in their endocarps, usually around Christmas, so you can while way the hours getting blood blisters in your palms trying to open the things. Coffee 'beans', coconuts, walnuts, pecans, pistachios and macadamias are also all the endocarps and/or seeds of drupe-like fruits, which are usually misnamed as nuts: the bit we eat is the seed itself, although most of them arrive at the table still in their endocarp stones.

Many of the alleged 'berries' are in fact very small drupes (druplets), where we just eat the whole thing, 'stone' and all: elderberries (a favourite of home wine makers) are druplets, and the raspberries (a species in the genus Rubus) are aggregates of tiny druplets (drupeceta), as are the blackberry, cloudberry, boysenberry, tayberry, loganberry, youngberry, salmonberry, dewberry and wineberry.

Berries

This brings us neatly onto the true berries. Berries are fruits that are fleshy all the way through, unlike drupes, which have a hard endocarp. A few of the things you think of as berries are actually berries: cranberries, bilberries, blueberries, gooseberries, and the other currants (Ribes): redcurrants, blackcurrants and whitecurrants. All are fleshy fruits full of otherwise naked seeds. Just for the sake of completeness, these berries are technically false berries (pseudocarps), because some of the fruit is formed from non-ovarian tissue.

Some rather less obvious berries (but without any caveats this time) are papaya, kiwi fruit, durians, aubergines (eggplants), cocoa 'beans' (from which chocolate comes: like chillis, these are arguably damp capsules), tomatoes, tomatillos, tamarillos, mangosteens, persimmons, Sharon fruit, guavas, starfruit, all cactus fruits (dragon fruits, pitahaya, prickly pears, etc.) and grapes (and obviously raisins, sultanas, currants, etc.).

Peppercorns and allspice are small, dried-out berries, and pomegranates are large berries with leathery skins, where the flesh is derived from arils.

Believe it or not, bananas are also berries, although the peel is composed of tissue not wholly derived from the ovary (much like the grains and false berries mentioned above), and the seeds are usually missing, as we grow only seedless varieties. So technically it's a sterile berry wrapped in a pseudocarp. The Chinese lantern fruits of Physalis are also berries, but they have a papery coat derived from the sepals of the flower, making them technically diclesia.

Related to the berries, but with a leathery pseudocarp outer coat, are the pepos. A pepo is the fruit of a member of the gourd family (Cucurbitaceae), which includes all the gourds, squashes, courgettes, zucchini, marrows, pumpkins, chayote, cantaloupes, melons, cucumbers, watermelons and loofahs (no, they're not a sort of sponge: they're the fibrous bit from inside a sort of giant cucumber). Sponges are animals by the way.

The berries of the Citrus family (Rutaceae), are called hesperidia; these also have tough outer coats, like a pepo, but in addition, the flesh is composed of swollen 'hairs'. Plants whose fruit is a hesperidium include the orange, lemon, lime, kaffir, citron, clementine, grapefruit, tangerine, calamondin, satsuma, kumquat and ugli.

Some fruits are aggregate berries, like the blackberries are aggregate drupes. This includes the custard apple, cherimoya and soursop and related species.

Not fruit at all

Now, just in case finding out that blackberries aren't berries, but that aubergines are, didn't come as enough of a shock, we now come to the things that aren't even fruits, which surprisingly enough includes apples, strawberries and figs.

Apples, pears, quinces, medlars and loquats are pomes. The real fruit of an apple is not the apple, but its core. The rest of the apple is a swollen receptacle, which is the cushion upon which the various bits of a flower sit. In apples, this cushion actually grows around the ovaries to protect them in the flower, and when the fruit grows, it's the receptacle that forms the bulk of the fruit. Hence apples are effectively medium sized drupes wrapped in a fleshy pseudocarp. The hips of their close relatives, the roses (all of these species are in the Rosaceae) have a similar structure.

Strawberries (also in the Rosaceae) are another pseudocarp: the fruits (which are achenes) are the gritty black bits; the fleshy bit is again receptacle tissue. A strawberry is quite similar to a blackberry: both are aggregate fruits formed from a flower with multiple, distinct ovaries. In the blackberry it's the receptacle (hull) that isn't worth eating, and the fruits that are, whereas in the strawberry, the receptacle is the interesting bit, and the fruits just get stuck in your teeth.

Even more bizarre than the pomes are the pseudocarps made of multiple fruits. Multiple fruits are derived not from a single flower (even blackberries and strawberries are derived from a single flower, only one with lots of separate ovaries), but from an entire inflorescence, containing a few to many thousands of flowers. The simplest sort are probably those like the jackfruit and breadfruit, which produce hundreds of flowers on a sort of round, sack-like stem. After pollination, the flowers drop off, and the stem expands into a big, wet bag of fruits.

Pineapples are similar: here the flowers are arranged around a tubular stem: after flowering, the stem and the fruits swell and fuse to form a pseudocarp called a coenocarpium. Corncobs are similar, but the individual fruits don't fuse together. Mulberry soroses are very similar to small, upside down pineapples (without the tuft of leaves at the the top), and figs are (almost precisely) mulberries turned inside out: the flowers are formed inside a balloon-like hollow stem. Imagine a sunflower with the edges wrapped over, until there's only a tiny entrance hole into the garden enclosed within. Fig 'fruits' are called syconia, and have an absolutely bizarre wasp-related sex life.

If I've missed anything, I heartily apologise, and you should feel free to email me and complain that I've forgotten to mention akee or something. It's an edible aril by the way.

Edibles

Fungi

Family	Parts eaten	Examples
Helvellaceae/Morchellaceae (morel family - ascomycete fungi)	Ascocarp	Morel
Saccharomycetaceae (true yeast family - ascomycete fungi)	Cells	Yeast
Hypocreaceae (family of plant pathogens - ascomycete fungi)	Hyphae	Quorn
Agaricaceae (agaric family - basidiomycete fungi)	Basidiocarp	Field, horse and chestnut mushroom
Pleurotaceae (oyster mushroom family - basidiomycete fungi)	Basidiocarp	Oyster mushroom, shiitake
Tuberaceae (truffle family - basidiomycete fungi)	Basidiocarp	Truffle
Amanitaceae (death-cap family - basidiomycete fungi)	Basidiocarp	Caesar's mushroom
Boletaceae (cep family - basidiomycete fungi)	Basidiocarp	Cep (bolete, penny-bun, porcini)
Cantharellaceae (chanterelle family - basidiomycete fungi)	Basidiocarp	Chanterelle, trompette-de-morte

Algae

Family	Parts eaten	Examples
Laminariacae (thongweed family - phaeophyte algae)	Thallus	Kombu, wakame, dulse
Porphyraceae (wrack family - rhodophyte algae)	Thallus	Laver, nori
Ulvaceae (sea-lettuce family - chlorophyte algae)	Thallus	Sea lettuce (green laver)

Gymnosperms

Family	Parts eaten	Examples
Cupressaceae (cypress family)	Strobilus (cone)	Juniper 'berry' (fleshy strobilus)
Pinaceae (pine family)	Seeds	Pine 'nuts'
Cycadaceae (cycad family)	Stem starch	Sago
Ginkgoaceae (ginkgo family)	Seeds	Ginkgo 'nuts'

Dicots

Family	Parts eaten	Examples
Brassicaeae (Mustard family)	Leaves	Cabbage, kale, Brussels-sprouts (buds), cress (seedlings), rocket, water-cress
	Inflorescence	Broccoli, cauliflower (fleshy flowers and stems)
	Seeds	Mustard, canola (rapeseed)
	Roots	Radish, turnip, swede, horseradish, wasabi, mooli (daikon)
	Stems	Kohl-rabi
Amaranthaceae (amaranth family), subfamily Chenopodioideae (goosefeet)	Leaves	Spinach, fat-hen, good King Henry, chard
	Stems	Marsh samphire
	Roots	Sugarbeet, beetroot, mangelwurzel
Asteraceae (daisy family)	Leaves	Lettuce, endive, chicory (bud), tarragon, absinthe (tincture of the leaves of wormwood)
	Leaf stalks (petioles)	Cardoon
	Flowers	Globe artichoke
	Root tubers	Jerusalem artichoke
Apiaceae (celery family)	Leaves	Parsley, coriander, cilantro, fennel, dill, chervil, lovage
	Leaf stalks (petioles)	Celery, fennel 'bulb', angelica
	Roots	Celeriac, carrot, parsnip
	Fruits (cremocarps - paired achenes with connecting column)	Coriander, fennel, cumin, caraway
	Resin	Asafoetida
Solanaceae (nightshade family)	Fruits (berries - occasionally capsules or diclesia)	Tomato, aubergine, tomatillos, tamarillos, physalis (papery coated diclesia), bell pepper, chilli (the latter two are arguably damp capsules)
	Stem tubers	Potato
Cucurbitaceae (cucumber family)	Fruits (pepos - hard skinned berries)	Courgette (zucchini), chayote, marrow, pumpkin, melon, squashes, cantaloupe, watermelon, cucumber
	Flowers	Courgette (zucchini)
Fabaceae (bean family)	Fruits (legumes/pods - or often just the seeds themselves)	Peanuts, beans, peas, lentils, dals, fenugreek (laves also eaten)
	Roots	Liquorice
Rosaceae (rose family)	Fruits (pseudocarps - of various types)	Apple, pear, quince, loquat, medlar (all pomes), rosehip (hip), strawberry (fragarium)
	Fruits (drupes - mesocarp edible)	Apricot, nectarine, peach, almond, sloe, bullace, greengage, jujube, cherry, plum, damson, rowan
	Fruits (drupeceta - aggregate druplets)	Raspberry, blackberry, cloudberry, boysenberry, tayberry, loganberry, youngberry, salmonberry, dewberry, wineberry
	Seed (kernel within an drupe endocarp is edible)	Almond
	Flowers	Rose petals
Lamiaceae (mint family)	Leaves	Mint, oregano, marjoram, savoury, rosemary, lemon-balm, sage, thyme, hyssop, basil
	Flowers	Lavender
Fagaceae (beech family)	Fruits (nuts - often with involucre of spiny bracts)	Hazelnut, filbert, acorn, chestnuts, beech mast
Proteaceae (protea family)	Fruits (nuts - hard, single layered fruits)	Macademia
Caprifoliaceae (elder family)	Fruits (druplets - tiny drupes)	Elderberry
Capparacaeae (caper family)	Flower buds	Caper
Myrtaceae (myrtle family)	Flower buds	Cloves
	Fruits (berries - some dried)	Rose-apple, allspice, guava
Trapaceae (water-chestnut family)	Corm	Water-chestnut
Lecythidaceae (Brazil-nut family)	Seed (from woody capsule)	Brazil 'nut'
Oxalidaceae (wood-sorrel family)	Fruit (berries)	Starfruit, carambola
Ericaeae (heather family)	Fruits (berries)	Cranberry, bilberry, whortleberry, blueberry
Nelumbonaceae (lotus family)	Roots	Lotus
Saxifragaceae (stonecrop family)	Fruits (berries)	Redcurrant, blackcurrant, gooseberry, whitecurrant
Moraceae (mulberry family)	Fruits (pseudocarps - of various sorts)	Fig (syconium), mulberry (sorus)
Rutaceae (rue family)	Fruit (hesperidia - a berry with fleshy internal hairs)	Orange, lime, kaffir lime, lemon, citron, tangerine, satsuma, mandarin, clementine, grapefruit, kumquat, ugli, pomelo, Szechuan pepper (dried berries)
	Leaves	Kaffir lime, curry leaves, rue
Urticaeae (nettle family)	Leaves	Nettles
Annonaceae (custard-apple family)	Fruits (aggregate berries)	Cherimoya, guanabana, custard apple, sweetsop, soursop
Cactaceae (cactus family)	Fruits (berries)	Dragon-fruit, pitahaya, prickly pear
Lauraceae (bay family)	Leaves	Bay
	Fruits (berries)	Avocado
	Bark	Cinnamon, cassia
Violaceae (violet family)	Flowers	Pansies, violets
Piperaceae (pepper family)	Fruits (drupes - usually dried)	Black pepper
Theaceae (tea family)	Leaves	Tea
Cannabinaceae (cannabis family)	Inflorescences	Hops (female flowers only)
Oleaceae (olive family)	Fruits (drupes)	Olive
Anacardiaceae (cashew family)	Fruits (drupes)	Mango, sumac, pistachio, cashew (the latter are arguably nuts, not drupes)
Vitaceae (vine family)	Leaves	Vine-leaf (dolmades)
	Fruits (berries)	Grape, raisin, sultana, currant
Boraginaceae (starflower family)	Leaves	Comfrey
	Flowers	Borage
Aceraceae (maple family)	Phloem sap	Maple syrup
Juglandaceae (walnut family)	Drupes (seed within endocarp edible)	Walnut, pecan
Tropaeolaceae (nasturtium family)	Leaves and flowers	Nasturtium
Rubiaceae (bedstraw family)	Fruits (berries)	Coffee
Sterculiaceae (cocoa family)	Fruits (damp follicles)	Kola 'nuts', cocoa 'beans'
Papaveraceae (poppy family)	Seeds	Poppyseed
Ranunculaceae (buttercup family)	Seeds	Nigella (kalonji)
Pedaliaceae (sesame family)	Seeds	Sesame
Punicaceae (pomegranate family)	Fruits (berries with fleshy arils)	Pomegranate
Ebenaceae (ebony family)	Fruits (berries)	Persimmon, Sharon-fruit
Convolvulaceae (bindweed family)	Root tubers	Sweet potato
Malvaceae (mallow family)	Fruits (follicles)	Okra
Bombaceae (durian family)	Fruit (berry)	Durian
Actinidiaceae (kiwifruit family)	Fruit (berry)	Kiwi fruit
Caricaeae (papaya family)	Fruits (berries)	Papaya
Clusiaceae (St. John's wort family)	Fruits (berries)	Mangosteen
Myristicaceae (nutmeg family)	Fruits (drupes)	Nutmeg (the seed), mace (the aril)
Euphorbiaceae (spurge family)	Roots	Yam, manihot, cassava, tapioca
Sapindaceae (soapberry family)	Fruits (drupes)	Lychee, rambutan, longan, akee (arils)
Polygonaceae (knotweed family)	Leaf stalks (petioles)	Rhubarb
	Seeds	Buckwheat

Monocots

Family	Parts eaten	Examples
Lilaceae/Alliaceae (lily/onion family)	Leaves	Chives
	Leaf stalks (petioles)	Leek, spring onion
	Bulb (resting bud)	Onion, garlic, shallot
	Stems	Asparagus
Iridaceae (iris family)	Stigmata	Saffron
Zingiberaceae (ginger family)	Rhizome	Ginger, galangal, turmeric, krachai
	Fruits (capsules)	Cardamom
Musaceae (Banana family)	Fruit (berry)	Banana, plantain
Orchidaceae (Orchid family)	Fruit (follicles)	Vanilla
Pandanaceae (screwpine family)	Leaves and flowers	Pandanus
Araceae (arum family)	Leaves	Dasheen
	Corms	Taro, eddoe
Arecaceae (palm family)	Fruits (berries and drupes)	Date (berry), coconut (drupe - we eat the endosperm of the seed)
Bromeliaceae (bromeliad family)	Fruits (pseudocarps)	Pineapple
Poaceae (grass family)	Leaf stalks	Lemon grass
	Fruits (pseudocarps called cypselae) or cleaned endosperm	Wheat, barley, rye, rice, oats, maize, sweetcorn (whole infrutescence)
	Buds	Bamboo