Veggie Index
Get to know the beloved plant foods that grow around the world, the families they belong to, and the stories that bind us all together.
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Plants that are closely related are organized into plant families that all share similar characteristics. Often descendent from the same ancient plant ancestor, the foods we know and love today were selected for over hundreds and even thousands of years to modify specific traits.
For example, the same ancient Brassica was bred for enlarged flowers and became broccoli, and was also bred for enlarged leaves, which became collards, etc.
When we learn about the connections within plant families, the stories of our food become clearer, the flavors more vibrant, the textures more tactile.
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Plant family names are Latin words that almost all end in the same five letters, “aceae,” pronounced:
“Ay-see-Ay.”
The structure of botanical nomenclature has shifted over time, as have the classifications of different plants over the years. At the end of the day, the attempt to organize the natural world into tidy categories will never capture the full complex truth, but I digress.
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Although there are hundreds of plant families and millions of edible plants, the majority of the foods that we eat belong to just twelve plant families.
The rest of the plant families in this index have been roughly organized by climate in which the majority of their edible members reside, resulting in the following five Family Groups: Top Twelve, Mostly Temperate, Mostly Tropical, Mostly Aquatic, Mostly Arid.
It’s always a challenge to attempt to categorize life in any way, as things are always messier in reality than we want them to be in our minds, but overall, this system of organization helps me to conceptualize the connections between the foods we eat.
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This is the resource that I’ve always wanted to have myself, and it’s also definitely a hyperfixation project I started during the pandemic, and it is nowhere near complete nor will it ever be. I hope you enjoy getting lost in the absolutely thrilling drama that is botanical categorization. Get ready for the DNA results.
TOP TWELVE
PLANT FAMILIES
MOSTLY TEMPERATE
PLANT FAMILIES
MOSTLY TROPICAL
PLANT FAMILIES
MOSTLY Aquatic
PLANT FAMILIES
MOSTLY Arid
PLANT FAMILIES
