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a vegetal tragedy

i have lived the majority of my life believing the vegetables i am aware of are the majority of the vegetables that exist. i've always envisioned that on one side of the vegtable world there lies our faithful friends: broccoli, peas, and bell peppers, and on the other side sits kohlrabi, chard, mangelwurzel, fare we are aware of but have never really consumed. recently though i've discovered i was quite wrong in my assumptions. beyond our standard knowledge of edible plants, there exists a substantial quantity of forgotten vegetables, vegtables that often were once staples in the diets of our anscestors, that are now subsumed largely by our daily veg, and occasionally by rarer exotic imported fare.

the british isles for instance, has as a whole long lost the knowledge of its native flora, that of the succelent leaves and tender shoots of good-king-henry, of the sharp pepperieness of sneezewort, and of the sweet earthiness of the burdock root. if it were just a few who had been lost, perhaps it would feel much less of a loss, but the list feels endless: yarrow, hedge and bear garlic, charlock, geranium, nettle, cattail, dandelion, sea kale, hairy bittercress, sea radish, sweet cicely, ramsons, buckrams, sea aster, orache, pink purslane. in looking afar for our food we have lost a great deal.

perhaps the worst part is that many of the above serve near identical purposes as the imported variaties. asparagus for the shoots of good-king-henry and spinach for the leaves, rocket for sneezewort, anise for yarrow. we've traded history for novelty and let novelty wash away our history. our vibrant wild fields and wild flowers are lost in exchange for uniform rows of unfamiliar replicas. it all just feels a shame.

if there are any vegetables from your own country that knowledge of has passed into antiquity, feel free to tell me about them at secondsofsand@protonmail.com