Stems can be hollow or solid, round or square, rough or smooth sugar cane and celery are stems. Stems are also called leaf stalks.
Stem vegetables (vegetable crops) are those plants from which edible botanical stems are harvested for use in culinary preparations. They can be divided further into those with edible stems that are above ground and those with modified underground stems. Swollen modified stems, such as bulbs, tubers, corms, and rhizomes, serve as main food storage organs.
Crop plants which are grown for their starchy roots, tubers and corms are called root and tuber crops which are generally placed under the domain of agronomy. But as to human consumption, they can be considered vegetables under horticulture.
Examples of these vegetable crops, without considering geographical adaptation, are provided in the table below. The botanical names, family, and other relevant information are supplied. The names of the underground storage organs of root and tuber crops were checked with the list provided by Kawakami (1978) and the current family names were confirmed with Simpson (2010).
Take note that the listed stem vegetables belonging to the same botanical family have the same kind of modified underground stem.
HILL A. 1972. Economic Botany. 2nd ed. New Delhi: Tata McGraw-Hill Publishing Co. Ltd. 560 p.
KAWAKAMI K. 1978. Physiology of yield of underground storage organs. In: Gupta US, ed. Crop Physiology. New Delhi: Oxford & IBH Publishing Co. p. 269-309.
MERRILL E. 1912. Flora of Manila. Manila: Bureau of Printing. 491 p.
PEEL L. 2004. HarperCollins Practical Gardener: Kitchen Garden. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers Inc. 176 p.
SIMPSON MG. 2010. Plant Systematics. 2nd ed. San Diego, CA: Elsevier Inc. 740 p.
The Essential Gardening Encyclopedia. 2003. San Francisco, CA: Fog City Press. 608 p.