Plants

Monday, 26 January 2026
21 facts about olives
21 facts about olives
"Where the olive refuses to grow, there the Mediterranean world ends"
It is not known exactly when and where the first olive tree, characteristic of the Mediterranean region, grew. Paleobotanists claim that wild olives g ...

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Olives
Olives for oil production are harvested from mid-December to March.
Tomatoes
They came to Europe in the 16th century, brought by Spanish sailors from Mexico.
Sesame seeds
Sesame is grown for its edible seeds.
In 2020, global sesame production was 7 million tons. The largest producers were Sudan, Myanmar and Tanzania.
Broad beans
In Egypt, it was the food of simple, poor people.
Priests could not eat it, a special prohibition applied to the priests of the goddess Isis. However, ...
Sugar maple
The knowledge of a “tree producing a sweet substance” was introduced to Europeans in 1663 by a British chemist, Robert Boyle.
Birch
These are monoecious and wind-pollinated plants.
This means that one individual has both male and female inflorescences. Male flowers bloom in autumn ...
Stinging nettle
Roman soldiers carried nettle seeds to rub into their skin to counteract the effects of numbness in the limbs caused by fatigue and weather conditions.
Cabbage
Unlike most cabbages, the edible part of turnips is the tuber and not the leaves.
Turnip leaves are used as animal feed, although they are an excellent source of vitamins and could a ...
Tomatoes
Because of the red color of the fruit and its characteristic smell, tomatoes were considered poisonous plants.
As late as the 19th century, it was believed that eating a tomato would turn the blood to acid. They were treated only as ornamental plants.
Saguaro cactus
Earliest documented use of saguaro dates back to 1540 when Pedro de Castañeda noticed O'odham tribesmen collecting cactus fruits.
He wrote a brief note about harvest and ritual of preparing fermented juice of cactus fruits.