Vegetable is a nutritional and culinary term denoting any part of a plant that is commonly consumed by humans as food, but is not regarded as a culinary fruit, nut, herb, spice, or grain. These include leaf vegetables (e.g. lettuce), stem vegetables (asparagus), root vegetables (carrot) and flower vegetables (broccoli), and botanical fruits such as green beans, cucumbers, squashes, pumpkins, tomatoes, avocadoes, capsicums, et cetera, as well as fleshy, immature seeds such as those of maize, peas or beans.
Commercial production of vegetables is a branch of horticulture called olericulture.
Traditionally the term Vegetable can also be used to designate the entire Plant Kingdom, as in "Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral."
See Also
The term vegetable is also used in a derogatory way to refer to a patient with severe brain damage, or who is in a persistent vegetative state.
- truck farm is a farm that raises vegetables, but little or no grain. Truck is an archaic word for vegetables.
