For many, November marks the beginning of a season of gathering with friends and family, and food typically plays a starring role. We settle into chairs around dinner tables or hurriedly gather around a warm tray of food fresh out of the oven, not even realizing the varied and amazing ways the food grows.
Learn about some of the more unusual ways the food we eat grows and share these fun facts at your next gathering!
Cashews
This tropical tree, Anacardium occidentale, is native to the Americas is grown commercially in Brazil, India, Vietnam, Côte d’Ivoire, and Tanzania among others. The delicious and nutritious nuts we know as cashews are seeds contained in the “true fruit” of the cashew tree. Roughly cashew shaped, the fruit (technically a drupe) turns olive green when ripe and hangs from the bottom of a pear-shaped pseudofruit or “false fruit” known as the cashew apple.
This fleshy structure is formed from the swollen pedicle and receptacle. It ripens from green to yellow or red and has a sweet flavor and fibrous texture.
Did you know? Pedicle is flower stalk and receptacle is a flower base.
Cashew apples bruise very easily so they are not sold commercially but can be found locally in tropical regions where cashew trees are grown.
Brussels sprouts
Brussels sprouts, Brassica oleracea, share a scientific name with many other cruciferous vegetables. This includes kale, cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, kohlrabi. But how can the same plant exhibit so many different growth forms?
The secret is in centuries of artificial selection. Farmers and growers selected for specific, desirable traits, like larger size and better flavor, expressed in different parts of the plant. For example, broccoli has dense flowerheads and kohlrabi has thickened stems.
Brussels sprouts have enlarged axillary buds or “side shoots.” The axillary buds grow along the stem at the bases of the leaf axils, so having longer stems is advantageous. The resulting Brussels sprout plants are tall, often requiring staking.
Pineapple
Despite their common name, pineapples, Ananas comosus, do not grow on pine trees. Actually, they don’t grow on a tree at all. Pineapples are the fruiting structure of a bromeliad, a name used for members of the Bromeliaceae family. A diverse group of plants, bromeliads also include common houseplants like air plants and guzmania.
Pineapple plants can be quite large, reaching up to 4 feet tall and equally as wide. They are made up of a rosette of long, strap-like leaves sometimes armed with sharp spines. Pineapples are unique among bromeliads for their fruiting structure that has been selected over time for its large size and juicy, sweet, seedless flesh.
Vanilla
Although orchids belong to one of the largest plant families in the world only one is consumed at a significant scale: vanilla.
Did you know? The orchid family, orchidaceae, is potentially rivaled in size only by the aster family, Asteraceae.
Native to Mexico and grown commercially in Madagascar, Indonesia, China, Papua New Guinea, Tahiti, and other tropical locales, vanilla, Vanilla planifolia, is a vining orchid with large, showy blooms. The flowers require hand pollination to form seed pods that are then harvested and cured.
The curing process can take 5-8 months and requires various stages of fermenting, drying, and conditioning before the “beans” are ready for shipping. This long and labor-intensive process is part of the reason vanilla, even vanilla extract, is one of the more expensive items in a baker’s pantry.
American cranberry
Cranberries, Vaccinium macrocarpon, are a member of the heath family, Ericaceae. This family also includes other edible favorites such as blueberries, lingonberries, huckleberries, and wintergreen. American cranberries are low-growing, subshrubs with thin stems and small, evergreen leaves. They are native to swampy, acidic peat bogs in northern and eastern portions of the United States and Canada. The fruits are glossy and bright red when ripe with a tart flavor. Inside the fruits are air pockets which enable them to float. In the wild, this would aid with seed dispersal, and in cultivation this characteristic has led to a unique harvesting method.
When the fruit is ripe, the cranberry bogs are flooded and the plants agitated to release the fruits which float to the top of the water. From there the fruit can be collected for processing.
Justine Kandra
Horticulturist
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