A common plant you’ll find growing as “a weed” throughout the Americas, this green when eaten young (before it flowers) is incredibly nutrient rich and flavorful much like spinach, and is eaten regularly in soups and stir-fries in many Indigenous and Latinx communities as a common quelite. The fruits are small blueberry-sized berries that are poisonous when green, but tasty and harmless when ripened to fully black.

This Solanaceous green is super spiny, but when the young leaves and stems are cooked down they make for a delicious, melt-in-your-mouth green with a spinach-artichoke flavor. Larger spines are removed while younger ones soften up easily. Quishtán is indigenous to Guatemala and is commonly cooked en caldos y sopas, in broths and soups.