Root
Plants harvested primarily for underground storage organs—tubers, taproots, rhizomes, or corms. These parts store starches or medicinal compounds and often keep well after harvest. Cassava, turmeric, and wild yam fit here.
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Cassava: From Toxic Tuber to Food Staple
Cassava is a vital global food source, feeding millions despite its raw form being toxic. This story explores how human ingenuity transformed it from a poisonous South American tuber into a staple crop cultivated and consumed around the world.
root, tropical, drought-tolerant, staple -
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Contrayerva
Francis Drake’s 16th-century voyage around the globe helped spark a wave of European interest in exotic plants, feeding the rise of botanical science. This story follows how naturalists like Charles Clusius used explorers’ accounts to build networks, botanical gardens, and a new culture of plant collecting in early modern Europe.
herb, medicinal, root, tropical -
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Salvation and Suffering: Potato
The potato (Solanum tuberosum), domesticated in the Andes around 10,000 years ago, has shaped histories of empire, famine, migration, and survival. Celebrated for its resilience yet feared for its vulnerabilities, it has been viewed as both sustenance and threat. In Europe, it fueled debates about class, culture, and nutrition, while in Ireland it became a symbol of tragedy during the Great Famine. Across contexts—from Incan mythology to French Enlightenment science, from satirical caricatures to Japanese American incarceration camps—the potato embodies both comedy and suffering, resilience and fragility. Today, global research seeks to preserve its genetic diversity and protect it from blight, continuing its story as an archive of both survival and resistance.
cold-hardy, high-altitude, root, staple, temperate, vegetable -
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Turmeric: Herb of the Sun
Turmeric, prized for its vivid yellow-orange rhizome, has long been used as a spice, medicine, and dye across South and Southeast Asia. This story traces how its distinctive color and flavor not only shaped South Asian cuisine but also played a role in British imperial identity and cultural performance.
root, spice, medicinal, tropical -
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Wild Yam: The Rhizome of the Pill
Wild yam (Dioscorea villosa), once key to the development of the birth control pill, has a complex history shaped by Indigenous knowledge and commercial science. This story revisits how the plant was studied and represented, challenging traditional botanical illustrations to reflect its deeper cultural and medicinal significance.
root, medicinal, vine, temperate
