Under this term it will be convenient for us to include all plants which are employed for culinary purposes, or for table use, such as salads and relishes. The potato and sweet potato, the pumpkin and squash, the red or capsicum peppers, and the tomato, are of American origin. All the others are, most probably, natives of the Old World.
Only one plant coming in this class has been derived from Southern Australia – namely, New Zealand spinach.
Among the vegetables and salad-plants longest in cultivation we may enumerate the following: turnip, onion, cabbage, purslane, the large bean (Faba), chick-pea, lentil, and one species of pea (garden-pea). To these an antiquity of at least 4000 years is ascribed.
Next to these, in point of age, come the radish, carrot, beet, garlic, garden-cress, and celery, lettuce, asparagus, and the leek. Three or four leguminous seeds are to be placed in the same category, as are also the black peppers.Of more recent introduction the most prominent are: the parsnip, oyster-plant, parsley, artichoke, endive, and spinach.
From these lists I have purposely omitted a few which belong exclusively to the tropics, such as certain yams.
The number of varieties of these vegetables is astounding. It is, of course, impossible to discriminate between closely allied varieties which have been introduced by gardeners under different names, but which are essentially identical. The potato has innumerable varieties, of which forty are accepted as easily distinguishable and worthy of a place in a general list. The following numbers speak for themselves, all being selected in the same careful manner as those of the potato: celery more than twenty; carrot more than thirty; beet, radish, and potato, more than forty; lettuce and onion more than fifty; turnip more than seventy; cabbage, kidney-bean, and garden pel, more than one hundred.
The amount of horticultural work which these numbers represent is enormous. Each variety established as a race (that is, a variety which comes true to seed) has been evolved by the same sort of patient care and waiting which we have seen is necessary in the case of cereals, but the time of waiting has not been as a general thing so long.
Of course to make use of these vegetables you need to have a good recipe for salad.
Donald “DonOmite” Hammond loves a huge salad on a hot day or even on a cold day. He believes salads are one of the most flexible meals you can make.
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