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 by small and large commercial producers, both as grain legume and as an oil crop. Atypically among legumes, peanut pods develop underground leading botanist Carl Linnaeus to name peanuts hypogaea, which means "under the earth".
An apricot is a fruit, or the tree that bears the fruit, of several species in the genus Prunus.
Vaccinium vitis-idaea is a small evergreen shrub in the heath family, Ericaceae. It is known colloquially as the lingonberry, partridgeberry, foxberry, mountain cranberry, or cowberry. It is native to boreal forest and Arctic tundra throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Commercially cultivated in the United States Pacific Northwest and the Netherlands, the edible berries are also picked in the wild and used in various dishes, especially in Nordic cuisine.
Vaccinium macrocarpon, also called large cranberry, American cranberry and bearberry, is a North American species of cranberry in the subgenus Oxycoccus.
Rubus spectabilis, the salmonberry, is a species of bramble in the rose family Rosaceae, native to the west coast of North America from west-central Alaska to California, inland as far as Idaho. Like many other species in the genus Rubus, the salmonberry plant bears edible fruit, typically yellow-orange or red in color, resembling raspberries in appearance.
Custard apple is a common name for several fruits and may refer to Annonaceae, the custard apple family, which includes the following species referred to as custard apples:
Rubus phoenicolasius is an Asian species of raspberry in the rose family, native to China, Japan, and Korea.
Juglans cinerea, commonly known as butternut or white walnut, is a species of walnut native to the eastern United States and southeast Canada.
Prunus maritima, the beach plum, is a species of plum native to the East Coast of the United States. It is a choice wild edible and its few pests and salt tolerance make it a resilient fruit crop for degraded lands and urban soils.
Vaccinium myrtillus or European blueberry is a holarctic species of shrub with edible fruit of blue color, known by the common names bilberry, blaeberry, wimberry, and whortleberry. It is more precisely called common bilberry or blue whortleberry to distinguish it from other Vaccinium relatives.
Arachis batizocoi is a herb native to Bolivia and Paraguay. This plant is cited as gene sources for research in plant biology of peanut. Arachis batizocoi maintains a divergent genome as well as high fertility that facilitates the upbringing of new and beneficial alleles within peanut crops. Such high crossability has increased the frequency of several advantageous alleles that have improved plant life and agricultural output. Among these are boosted resistance against groundnut yield-limiting diseases such as late leaf spot (LLS) and groundnut rosette disease (GRD), larger seeds, and a higher overall yield.
Rollinia is a genus of plants in the family Annonaceae. While it is widely recognised as a distinct genus a monograph published in 2006 advocates its inclusion in Annona, which also contains custard apples and soursops.
Rubus ursinus is a North American species of blackberry or dewberry, known by the common names California blackberry, California dewberry, Douglas berry, Pacific blackberry, Pacific dewberry and trailing blackberry.
Rubus rosifolius,, also known as roseleaf bramble, Mauritius raspberry, thimbleberry,Vanuatu raspberry and bramble of the Cape is a prickly subshrub native to rainforest and tall open forest of the Himalayas, East Asia, and eastern Australia. Its double-flowered variety is named Rubus rosifolius var. coronarius.
Archips argyrospila, the fruit-tree leafroller moth, is a moth of the family Tortricidae. It is found in most of the United States and southern Canada.
Vaccinium oxycoccos is a species of cranberry in the heath family. It is known as small cranberry, marshberry, bog cranberry, swamp cranberry, or just cranberry. It occurs broadly across cooler climates in the temperate Northern Hemisphere.
Phaseolus polystachios, also known as the thicket bean or wild kidney bean, is a perennial, herbaceous vine that is native to North America. It is unique among the Phaseolus in that its native range extends across the eastern temperate United States to southeast Canada, while most Phaseolus are tropical or subtropical. It is the namesake for the Polystachios group clade, which is the most species-rich within Phaseolus. In spite of its common name, it is more closely related to the lima bean, and it holds potential as a crop wild relative due to its resistance to white mold.
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