A number of popular and commercially important food plants are native to the Americas. Some are endemic, meaning they occur naturally only in the Americas and nowhere else, while others occur naturally both in the Americas and on other continents as well.
When complete, the list below will include all food plants native to the Americas (genera marked with a dagger † are endemic), regardless of when or where they were first used as a food source. For a list of food plants and other crops which were only introduced to Old World cultures as a result of the Columbian Exchange touched off by the arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492, see New World crops. [1]
The peanut, also known as the groundnut, goober (US), goober pea, pindar (US) or monkey nut (UK), is a legume crop grown mainly for its edible seeds. It is widely grown in the tropics and subtropics, important to both small and large commercial producers. It is classified as both a grain legume and, due to its high oil content, an oil crop. Atypically among legume crop plants, peanut pods develop underground (geocarpy) rather than above ground. With this characteristic in mind, the botanist Carl Linnaeus gave peanuts the specific epithet hypogaea, which means "under the earth".
The Faboideae are a subfamily of the flowering plant family Fabaceae or Leguminosae. An acceptable alternative name for the subfamily is Papilionoideae, or Papilionaceae when this group of plants is treated as a family.
Arachis is a genus of about 70 species of annual and perennial flowering plants in the family (Fabaceae), native to South America, and was recently assigned to the informal monophyletic Pterocarpus clade of the Dalbergieae. At least one species, the peanut, is a major food crop species of global importance; some of the other species are cultivated for food to a small extent in South America. Other species such as A. pintoi are cultivated worldwide as forage and soil conditioner plants, with the leaves providing high-protein feed for grazing livestock and a nitrogen source in agroforestry and permaculture systems.
The Japanese beetle is a species of scarab beetle. Due to the presence of natural predators, the Japanese beetle is not considered a pest in its native Japan, but in North America and some regions of Europe, it is a noted pest to roughly 300 species of plants. Some of these plants include rose bushes, grapes, hops, canna, crape myrtles, birch trees, linden trees, and others.
The Annonaceae are a family of flowering plants consisting of trees, shrubs, or rarely lianas commonly known as the custard apple family or soursop family. With 108 accepted genera and about 2400 known species, it is the largest family in the Magnoliales. Several genera produce edible fruit, most notably Annona, Anonidium, Asimina, Rollinia, and Uvaria. Its type genus is Annona. The family is concentrated in the tropics, with few species found in temperate regions. About 900 species are Neotropical, 450 are Afrotropical, and the remaining are Indomalayan.
The common swift is a moth of the family Hepialidae. It was previously placed in the genus Hepialus. It is a common, often abundant European species. The species was described by Carl Linnaeus in his 1758 10th edition of Systema Naturae.
Saturnia pavonia, the small emperor moth, is a moth of the family Saturniidae. It was first described by Carl Linnaeus in his 1758 10th edition of Systema Naturae. Sometimes, the incorrect genus name Pavonia is still used for this species. This moth occurs throughout the Palearctic region and is the only member of its family to be found in the British Isles, where it is usually called simply the emperor moth.
Peanut mottle virus(PeMoV) is a pathogenic plant virus of the family Potyviridae. As with other members of this virus family, PeMoV is a flexuous filamentous virus with particles 740–750 nm long. It is transmitted by several species of aphids and by mechanical inoculation. It was first given its name in 1965 when it was isolated from peanuts (Arachis hypogaea) in Georgia, United States. The virus was found to be seed transmitted in its host.
A crop wild relative (CWR) is a wild plant closely related to a domesticated plant. It may be a wild ancestor of the domesticated (cultivated) plant or another closely related taxon.
Lithophane socia, the pale pinion, is a moth of the family Noctuidae. The species was first described by Johann Siegfried Hufnagel in 1766. It is found throughout western Europe from Spain to central Scandinavia then east across the Palearctic to Siberia, the Russian Far East and Japan.
Amyna axis, the oriental eight-spot, is a moth of the family Noctuidae. The species was first described by Achille Guenée in 1852.
Apocheima strigataria, the small phigalia moth, is a moth of the family Geometridae. The species was first described by Charles Sedgwick Minot in 1869. It is found in North America, where it has been recorded from North Dakota to Texas and further east. The habitat consists of woodlands and forests.
Muisca cuisine describes the food and preparation the Muisca elaborated. The Muisca were an advanced civilization inhabiting the central highlands of the Colombian Andes before the Spanish conquest of the Muisca in the 1530s. Their diet and cuisine consisted of many endemic flora and fauna of Colombia.
Euproctis fraterna is a moth of the family Erebidae first described by Frederic Moore in 1883. It is found in the Maldives, India, Sri Lanka and the Seychelles.
Amyna stricta, the eight-spot moth, is a species of owlet moth in the family Noctuidae. It is found in North, Central, and South America.
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