the.com/root vegetable
A plant's underground savings account, dug up and eaten before it can spend it.
means An edible plant part that grows underground — a root, tuber, or bulb — storing the nutrients and energy the plant needs to survive and regrow.
from 'Root' traces back through Old English and Old Norse 'rot' to a very old Germanic and ultimately Indo-European base shared with 'wort' and, distantly, 'radix' (the Latin root behind 'radical' and 'radish'). 'Vegetable' comes from Latin 'vegetare,' to enliven or animate, from 'vegetus,' lively — so a vegetable was literally a 'growing, quickening thing' before it narrowed to mean food plants on a dinner plate.
- botanical cheat
- some are actually stems, like potatoes and ginger
- storage trick
- packed with starch to survive winter underground
- color clue
- beets stain everything because they never stop bleeding
- carrot myth
- wild carrots were purple before dutch breeders went orange