This aquatic herb has pungent, compound leaves, a large end leaflet, and racemes of small white flowers in spring and summer.
Uses
Popular in salad and soups, watercress is a diuretic, an expectorant,and it prevents scurvy, it unloads toxins, cleanses the blood and clears the skin.
Mints
Most mints, including the best known Spearmint and Peppermint, are creeping plants that hybridized easily, producing infinite variations. They have erect, square, branching stems, aromatic foliage, and flowers in leaf-axils.
Uses
Spearmint, Peppermint, and Apple mint flavor sauces, vinegar, vegetables, desserts and are crystallized.
Eucalyptus
The Eucalyptus genus comprises over 500 species of aromatic trees and shrubs with deciduous bark. The most common species, Tasmanian Blue Gum (Eucalyptus globules), has blue-gray trunk, blue-green juvenile leaves, green adult leaves, and white flower stamens.
Uses
Eucalyptus leaves are used to bind wounds. The oil distilled from the leaves and twigs is used ion medicines, aromatherapy, and perfumes. Eucalyptus oil is antiseptic, expectorant, and anti-viral.
Fragrant Screw Pine
The name screw pine reflects the spiral arrangement of the leaves of plants in this genus. They often have stilt roots and are grown for their unusual appearance. Mature trees bear scented white bracts around the male flower and pineapple-like fruit.
Uses
The fragrant leaves are used either fresh or dried in cookery. The bracts around the male flower contain a strong rose-scented essential oil which is used in perfumes.
Tobacco
This annual or biennial has large, long leaves and green-white, tabular flowers.
Uses
The cured, dried leaves are smoked as narcotics, but the poisonous nicotine they contain causes heart and lung disease and cancer.
Sunflower
This fast growing annual has a thick, tall hairy stem, heart-shaped leaves, and large yellow flower-heads in late summer.
Uses
The nutritious seeds are eaten raw, roasted and ground into meal or nut butter.
Soya
It has erect or trilling stems of finely segmented, blue-green foliage and racemes of small, tubular pink flowers.
Uses
Soya beans contain 48 percent protein, plus lecithin, vitamins, and minerals. Low in cholesterol, they help prevent heart disease and are valuable for diabetics as the sugar remains unabsorbed.
Coconut Palm
It is a graceful, leaning palm topped by a spray of pinnate leaves six meters long, an inflorescence of cream flowers, and large single seeded fruit. The husk under the ripe skin houses the hard-shelled coconut.
Uses
The coconut is considered as most valuable of all the palms. The trunk is used as a building material, the leaves for thatch and weaving, and the palm heart is cooked.
