Which Part Are You Eating?

What Are You Actually Eating?

Name Date

DIRECTIONS: Root, stem, leaf, flower, fruit or seed: which part of the plant is each vegetable?

RootAnchors the plant and pulls water and minerals out of the soil. Often a store cupboard as well, which is why so many are worth eating.

StemCarries water up and food down. Holds everything else in the air.

LeafWhere food is made out of light. Thin and flat, to catch as much as possible.

FlowerThe part that makes seeds. Usually short-lived, and usually the most fussed-over part of the plant.

FruitWhatever grows around the seeds to protect them or get them carried away. Not always sweet, and not always called a fruit.

SeedA whole new plant packed up with a food supply to start it off. Which is why seeds are the richest things on the list.

Fill it in, then read the answers

Cover the right-hand column, write your answer, then look.

in the drawer	which part?
Sweetcorn		Seeds, in rows, still attached to the plant. Each one would grow a whole maize plant.
Tomato		Grew around seeds, so it is a fruit. Every seed is still in there.
Beetroot		Same idea as a carrot — a swollen root, storing sugar for a second year it usually never gets.
Celery		Stems, standing up, with the leaves cut off the top. The strings are the water pipes.
Cauliflower		The same plant as broccoli, bred so the buds crowd into a solid white head.
Potato		NOT a root. A swollen underground stem — which is why it has EYES, and an eye is a bud, and only stems have buds.
Carrot		One fat tap root, with the thin feeding roots trimmed off. The green top is the actual plant.
Onion		Leaf bases, wrapped round each other underground. Cut one across and you are looking at rings of leaf.
Broccoli		Hundreds of flower buds caught before they open. Let one bolt in a garden and it goes yellow and blooms.
Lettuce		Leaves, and nothing else. Same for cabbage, spinach and kale.
Peas		Seeds, and the pod is the fruit they grew inside.
Asparagus		A young shoot, cut before it opens out. Leave it and it becomes a tall feathery bush.
Cucumber		Fruit. So are peppers, courgettes, aubergines and pumpkins — all of them grew around seeds.
Radish		A root again. The heat is a chemical defense against being eaten, which has not worked.

The Potato Argument

What Are You Actually Eating?

DIRECTIONS: Two arguments you can settle at home.

A potato is not a root. It is a stem.

Its eyes are buds, and only stems have buds. Leave a potato in a cupboard for three weeks and shoots grow from the eyes; a carrot just goes soft.

And half the drawer is fruit

A fruit is whatever grew around the seeds, sweet or not. Tomato, cucumber, pepper, zucchini, eggplant, pumpkin, green bean: all fruit.

So what is a vegetable?

Not a plant part at all. Vegetable is a cooking word: a plant piece served with the main course. It picks up roots, flowers, fruits and seeds alike.

Try it: find all six parts in the vegetable drawer. Which kitchen food are you least sure about? How would you settle it?