Nasturtium, fruit or vegetable?
How do we know if the part of a plant we eat is a fruit or a vegetable? With tree fruit it's easy to tell. But with crops in the garden it's trickier.
A fruit is the part of the plant that is a flower that then grows a seed, or seeds. So cucumbers are fruit, as are pumpkins, squashes, olives, etc.
Vegetables are parts of a plant that we eat that don't have seeds. Some examples of vegetables are cabbages, carrots, (which is a root), chard, spinach, lettuce.
The nasturtium in the picture above shows the fruit and vegetable parts clearly. We can eat the sweet flower as fruit or to decorate a salad or cake. We can eat the leaves as a vegetable in a salad or to give a sandwich a nice, peppery taste. The flower and leaf come from the same plant but they have very different tastes. One is a fruit and the other is a vegetable.
Have you tried a nasturtium leaf or flower? (Make sure it hasn't been sprayed.)
You can read more about foods in "Kids Who Grow Their Own Food, facts, notes and helpful hints"
