Asparagus

Appearance

Asparagus is a herbaceous, perennial plant growing to 100–150 centimetres tall, with stout stems with much-branched feathery foliage. The "leaves" are in fact needle-like cladodes in the axils of scale leaves; they are 6–32 mm long and 1 mm broad, and clustered 4–15 together, in a rose-like shape.

The root system is adventitious and the root type is fasciculated. The flowers are bell-shaped, greenish-white to yellowish, 4.5–6.5 mm long, with six tepals partially fused together at the base; they are produced singly or in clusters of two or three in the junctions of the branchlets. It is usually dioecious, with male and female flowers on separate plants, but sometimes hermaphrodite flowers are found. The fruit is a small red berry 6–10 mm diameter, which is poisonous to humans.

Plants native to the western coasts of Europe are treated as ''Asparagus officinalis'' subsp. ''prostratus'' Corb., distinguished by its low-growing, often prostrate stems growing to only 30–70 cm high, and shorter cladodes 2–18 mm long. It is treated as a distinct species, ''Asparagus prostratus'' Dumort, by some authors.

Naming

''Asparagus officinalis'' is widely known simply as "asparagus", and may be confused with unrelated plant species also known as "asparagus", such as ''Ornithogalum pyrenaicum'' known as "Prussian asparagus" for its edible shoots.

The English word "asparagus" derives from classical Latin, but the plant was once known in English as ''sperage'', from the Medieval Latin ''sparagus''. This term itself derives from the Greek ''aspharagos'' or ''asparagos'', and the Greek term originates from the Persian ''asparag'', meaning "sprout" or "shoot". Asparagus was also corrupted in some places to "sparrow grass"; indeed, the Oxford English Dictionary quotes John Walker as having written in 1791 that "''Sparrow-grass'' is so general that ''asparagus'' has an air of stiffness and pedantry".

The Sanskrit name of Asparagus is ''shatavari'' and it has been historically used in India as a part of Ayurvedic medicines.

In East Asia, ''Asparagus officinalis'' is known as ''lùsǔn'' in Mandarin Chinese, ''louhséun'' in Cantonese, and ''lô͘-sún'' in Hokkien/Taiwanese. In Thai it is known as ''nǭmai farang'' , and in Vietnamese as ''măng tây'' which literally mean "European bamboo shoots" and "Western bamboo shoots", respectively. The green asparagus is commonly used in Chinese-American cuisine and Thai cuisine.

In Turkish, asparagus is known as "kuşkonmaz," literally "bird can't land," in reference to the shape of the plant.