Beet

Beet is a single species of the amaranth family that people have bred into several quite different crops: the red root vegetable called beetroot, the leafy chard, the sugar beet, and the mangelwurzel grown as cattle fodder. All descend from the sea beet, a wild plant of shorelines from western Europe and the Mediterranean to North Africa and western Asia. Usually grown as a biennial, it can reach about 120 centimetres, and the swollen roots of cultivated plants may be deep red, white or yellow. Its earliest written record comes from Mesopotamia in the eighth century BC; Romans gave the root for fevers and constipation, and Grieve records that the ancients presented it on silver to Apollo at Delphi. Jewish households serve it at Rosh Hashana, praying that their enemies depart, a pun on its Aramaic name. Culpeper treats the red and white sorts as two plants under different planets, putting the red beet under Saturn. In magic it is a love plant: Cunningham says a couple who eat from one beet will fall in love, and that its juice serves as an ink for love spells and as a stand-in for blood.