Plants & Trees Encyclopedia

Peppermint — Peppermint (Mentha × piperita) is a hybrid mint, a cross between watermint (Mentha aquatica) and spearmint (Mentha spicata). It is native to western, central and southern Europe from the British Isles east to southern Scandinavia and western Russia, south to Iberia, and southeast to the Balkans, being found wild occasionally with its parent species. Peppermint is sometimes regarded …

Pepper (Vegetable) — Bell pepper is a cultivar group of the species Capsicum annuum. Cultivars of the plant produce fruits in different colors, including red, yellow, green and orange. Bell peppers contain a recessive gene that prevents capsaicin from being produced, so they lack the spiciness that many other varieties of peppers have. Bell peppers are sometimes grouped with less …

Pepper (Spice) — Black pepper (Piper nigrum) is a flowering vine in the family Piperaceae, cultivated for its fruit, which is usually dried and used as a spice and seasoning. The same fruit is also used to produce white pepper, red/pink pepper, and green pepper. Black pepper is native to South India and is extensively cultivated there and elsewhere in …

Peony — The peony or paeony (Paeonia) is the sole genus in the flowering plant family Paeoniaceae. They are native to Asia, southern Europe and western North America. Most are herbaceous perennial plants 0.5–1.5 metres tall, but some are woody shrubs up to 1.5–3 metres tall. They have compound, deeply lobed leaves, and large, often fragrant flowers, ranging from red …

Pecan — The Pecan is a species of hickory, native to south-central North America, in the United States from southern Iowa, Illinois and Indiana east to western Kentucky and western Tennessee, south through Oklahoma, Arkansas, to Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana; and in Mexico from Coahuila south to Jalisco and Veracruz. It is a large deciduous tree, growing to 20–40 m …

Pear — A pear is a pomaceous fruit produced by a tree of genus Pyrus. The pear is classified within Maloideae, a subfamily within Rosaceae. The apple (Malus ×domestica) which it resembles in floral structure, is also a member of this subfamily. In both cases the so-called fruit is composed of the receptacle or upper end of the flower-stalk (the …

Peanut — The peanut, or Groundnut (Arachis hypogaea), is a species in the legume family Fabaceae native to South America, Mexico and Central America. It is an annual herbaceous plant growing to 30 to 50 cm (1 to 1½ ft) tall. The leaves are opposite, pinnate with four leaflets (two opposite pairs; no terminal leaflet), each leaflet 1 to 7 …

Peach — The peach (Prunus persica) is a species of Prunus native to China that bears an edible juicy fruit also called a peach. It is a deciduous tree growing to 5–10 m tall, belonging to the subfamily Prunoideae of the family Rosaceae. It is classified with the almond in the subgenus Amygdalus within the genus Prunus, distinguished from the …

Pea — A pea, although treated as a vegetable in cooking, is botanically a fruit; the term is most commonly used to describe the small spherical seeds or the pods of the legume Pisum sativum. The name is also used to describe other edible seeds from the Fabaceae like the pigeon pea (Cajanus cajan), the cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) and the …

Parsnip — The parsnip (Pastinaca sativa) is a root vegetable related to the carrot. Parsnips resemble carrots, but are paler and have a stronger flavor. Like carrots, parsnips are native to Eurasia and have been eaten there since ancient times. Zohary and Hopf note that the archeological evidence for the cultivation of the parsnip is “still rather limited”, and that …