Advertisement
Roots, Tubers, Rhizomes, and Corms
Appears in
By Diane Morgan
Published 2012
Long Before I Started Writing This Book—But When I was Already on the Garden Path, so to Speak, of Researching Root Vegetables—I Asked a Farmer Friend of Mine What Defined a Root Vegetable. It Seemed Like a Simple Question that Would Deliver a Straightforward Response.
Without waiting for an answer, I began to rattle off a long list of common roots: potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips, beets, sweet potatoes, radishes, kohlrabi. Sheldon stopped me at kohlrabi and said, “Actually, kohlrabi isn’t a root. It is an above-ground swollen stem, and it’s in the Brassicaceae family. Turnips are in the same family, and they are true roots.”