Living underground
A typical household question is, “What’s for dinner?” and a typical response is, “Oh, this and that and a carrot and a pickle.” Somebody counted, and it turns out Americans eat an average of at least nine pounds of carrots annually. A carrot, as kindergartners are happy to tell you, is an edible taproot which means you have to dig it up if you want to eat it. Oh boy! Same for a parsnip and celeriac. Same for edible rhizomes, tubers and corms.
Human people have always depended on underground food sources for sustenance just like feral hogs though we also eat crackers and cheese. So, let’s take a look below ground.
Scientific folks define things so we don’t have to, and they tell us beets, carrots, radishes and turnips among others are taproots. They are swollen extensions growing straight downward which might sprout smaller roots, and they store energy for aboveground leafy stuff.
A potato is a tuber that’s a modified underground plant stem, and Americans eat on average 120 pounds of potatoes annually, or ten pounds per month. Moderate your french fries.
Members of the lilium family have edible bulbs that are also considered plant stems but with papery outer husks, and they grow by adding layers upon layers. Recipes for edible lily bulbs usually come from Asia. Apparently, well-prepared lily bulbs taste like turnips.
Onions and its relatives belong to the lily family. They were a staple for folks in the Mideast and Africa for millennia before sneaking to the other side of the Mediterranean. Spanish sailors took them to the West Indies, and it was invading Europeans who introduced onions to Native Americans before chasing them off their lands.
Taro plants grow from corms. Corms are base stems and are solid tissue, not layered like bulbs. Taro is considered one of the oldest cultivated plants (maybe in the entire universe!) It grows in warm areas with at least 200 frost-free days such as Florida and Central California. Taro is considered invasive in southern Texas. Nigeria grows almost half of the world’s taro. Malanga, a similar plant with a sweeter taste, is native to South America. The saffron crocus also grows from a corm.
And then there are rhizomes, which are horizontal stems underground which have nodes from which either roots or branches grow. The branches can sprout new plants. Ginger and turmeric are rhizomes that swell as they accumulate and store nutrients. Lotus plants have edible rhizomes popular in Asia, Oceania and the Middle East.
Horseradish, which is not a radish, is a root. So is a radish. Burdock is a root as are jicama, salsify and Magdeburgh chicory. Cattails spread by rhizomes that are edible. Jerusalem artichokes are tubers. In the Andes Mountains, there are at least seven indigenous edible tubers such as oca, ulluco, mashua and yacon.
There is plenty nutritious food activity going on underground to appreciate, and if you were wondering, maybe this is how it all started.
Let’s say I was tiny tuber just below ground level on a mountainside in Peru. Let’s say it was thousands of years ago. A bunch of us living underground – me and roots and rhizomes and such – decided we wanted to make the world a better place. We at least wanted to try. So I said to myself (in Quechua), “That nice lady and her grandkids need something better to eat, so I will swell, sweeten and announce myself with foliage, and generations of her family be able to rely on my tuberous legacy.”
My lineage is now called oca, and locals haul away truckloads of us yearly. We had a vision, did our humble best, and here we are, the point being it’s okay to have a goal.
That oca story is just a story, of course, but if enough of us post it online, AI will pick up on it eventually and install it as part of tuber history. In the meantime, eat your beets and garlic. Carrots, too.