Celery - stems, stalks, or sticks?
Celery is a vegetable and plant that is prominent in American cooking, and infuses both cooked and raw dishes with its very special flavor. When I arrived in America I couldn't believe how much celery was added to tuna salads, soups, stews, and on plates with peanut butter. Back in Sweden I don't think we ever had celery in our fridge, and I can't think of one Swedish traditional recipe that has celery in it. So, it is a very common plant and food ingredient here in the US and many, many other cuisines, but it is not totally omnipresent. You would think people might like to know what part of the plant they eat, right? Well, that becomes a problem for celery. Many, many times there is big confusion about what those crunchy green celery sticks (also called 'ribs') are. First, here is the species in question, a celery plant.
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| Celery plant (Apium graveolens, Apiaceae) Illustration (public domain) from Thomé (1885), Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz (link) |
And here, celery from a store.
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| Celery ribs from a supermarket. (cc) Daniel James on Flickr (link) |
And here, the celery 'stick', the part that we eat, cut up into small, crunchy pieces.
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| Cut up celery sticks. (cc) Dey on Flickr (link) |
So, what part of the plant is this celery 'stick' really? What are our options? Well, plants have leaves, flowers, fruits, stems (branches, shoots, stalks), petiole (leaf stalk), pedicel (flower stalk), roots, tubers, and so on. These are the botanical names we use for plant parts. All of these can be green, but mostly leaves, stalks, and stems are green. On the internet you can find answers to everything. So, lets begin: Yahoo Answers:
"Both the stem and the leaves of a celery plant are eaten, but the long crunch part many people put peanut butter on is the stem" [this was voted the best answer on "Is celery a stem or leaves?"] Teacher's guide from New York Agriculture in the Classroom.com:
"Celery we eat is the stem of the plant." Wikipedia:
"Celery is used around the world as a vegetable for the crisp petiole (leaf stalk)." Wiki.answers.com:
"Is a celery stalk a stem?" Answer: "yes so is rubarb" Ask.com:
"Is celery a stem?" Answer:
"No celery is a vegetable. Celery has a stem. A single celery plant has lots of stems actually. Most plants and trees have stems which are sometimes referred to as stalks." Are you confused yet? Here are some more variations: GoodFood on BBC:
"A collection of long, thick, juicy stalks around a central, tender heart" The Cook's Thesaurus lists celery as a '
Stalk Vegetable'. Seattle Times, Food & Wine section:
"By most definitions, a whole head of celery is a stalk and a single "stick" from the stalk is a rib. Some dictionaries use the accurate but clunky term "leafstalk" for a single rib." Well, the confusion is total. The 'celery rib' that we cut off the plant and chop up or put peanut butter on is, based on internet facts, a stem, stalk, leafstalk, and petiole, all at the same time. This is not possible. It is one thing and one thing only. Look at the plant. At the top of your rib or stick are some leaves (unless you have cut them off, they were there before). Only leaves. There are no flowers, no growing part (with buds) that can lead to a stem that grows taller and taller, no fruits, no roots. At the bottom of the rib is a white area and then a broadened base. You can easily break of a rib from the rest of the plant in your hand.
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| Celery, as you buy it in the stores. (cc) Popolon on Wikimedia (link) |
Leaves are attached to stems and branches. Where is the stem on the celery? It is that small, disk-shaped woody part in the center of the plant. The roots have been cut off, so you no longer see them. But how does celery grow bigger and taller? When the plant is old enough it will shoot up one stem in the center of the leaves, and that stem will then grow taller than the leaves around it, have smaller leaves on it, and eventually flower and set seed high above the leaves at the base. Look at the first picture on this blogpost to see a flowering celery.
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| The parts of a plant. Note stem, leaf, and petiole. (c) Pearson Biocoach (link) |
So, celery sticks and ribs are not stems. They are part of the leaf, in fact, they are the leaf stalk, which is also called petiole. There are other ways to determine this too. If you cut the celery rib across you can see many veins in it, and they are arranged as a U. In most flowering plant stems, the veins are arranged in a circle, unless if it is a monocot, then the veins are arranged in a random scattered pattern. So, when you eat celery you eat the bottom part of the leaf, a fleshy petiole. Even if it doesn't look like a leaf, it is part of the leaf. One of the big problems here is that the word 'stalk' can be used for so many parts of a plant, including stem, leaf stalk, flower stalk, etc. No wonder people get confused. In rhubarb you also eat the petioles (contrary to the answer on Wiki.Answers.com above). So who got it right in the quotes above? Well, strictly speaking, only Wikipedia provided a completely correct answer. What is maybe most dismaying is that there are many biology lesson plans out there where teachers are told to cut celery ribs and put them in water with food coloring to
show how water moves through stems (example). (Some lesson plans get it right too, of course). Sorry teachers, you are showing how water and nutrients are moving in a leaf, not in a stem. And that makes a difference both to the plant and to scientific understanding among children and college students.
Posted by Botanical Accuracy at 11:34 PM 
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Would you care if someone called a cat 'a mouse' in the description of a medieval painting?Would you care if someone served you horse meat, but said it was beef? I bet you would.Would you care if the wrong chemical was listed in the ingredient list of your shampoo or cereal? Would you care if you bought one plant, but got another?Would you care if there were species or ingredient mistakes in advertising, menus, herbal pills, and such things?Would you care if books on plants are illustrated with the wrong plants?If so, here is the place for you to read about such problems in the world of plants and plant products, where unfortunately such mistakes, inaccuracies, and problems are not uncommon. This is usually due to lack of botanical knowledge or expertise, or sometimes because of plain ignorance.Inaccuracies are common when it comes to plants, because it seems like we humans care to learn less about green things like trees, flowers, and herbs than we care to learn about animals, even when we eat plants, paint them, plant them, extract their chemicals, or use them in numerous other ways.Without plants in the world you and I certainly would be dead. Some plants can also kill you with their toxins, so it is best to know which plant is what species. Time to learn some botany!
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About mistakes, inaccuracies, and errors
Science is a process of gaining knowledge and understanding of the world around us. It is a never-ending process, and what we think are true facts today might change tomorrow. In science we are aiming for having the best understanding possible today based on what we and our predecessors have learned until now. This means that what is botanically accurate from a scientific viewpoint might (and will) change. Other experts in the field of botany know a lot more about their particular research plants than I do. New scientific findings and conclusions are being published every day. This is just normal and part of the scientific process; we improve on our knowledge all the time. The important thing is our willingness to continuously aim for botanical accuracy and the highest scientific standards in our use of names and facts. When things are wrong, let's correct them. Let us not perpetuate wrong botanical knowledge by accepting its incorrect use on commercial products, in everyday language, or in other parts of our contemporary cultures. Through scientific education and specific corrections we will improve botany and science for everybody, in supermarkets, restaurants, and garden centers. It is the perpetuation of incorrect facts that are the problem, not the need for correction. Everybody makes mistakes, and everybody learns, throughout their lives. We need words to be able to communicate and talk about things, so let's use the right words and the right species names. Undoubtedly there will be mistakes and errors on this blog, or things that need to be updated. If you want to get in touch, please e-mail me at botanicalaccuracy at gmail.com. If you see a mistake on this blog, e-mail me with the link to the post and an explanation what is incorrect and should be updated. If you represent a company and want to get in touch, please use the same e-mail address.
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These companies and institutions need better botanical accuracy:
- Apple (computers and digital technology)
- Aveda (beauty)
- Burt's Bees (health and beauty products)
- Getty Images
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Botanical ingredient links
- A modern herbal (1931 by M. Grieve)
- Botanical Dietary Supplements information, NIH
- Dietary Supplements Labels Database, NLM/NIH (US)
- Dr. Duke's Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical Databases
- European Botanical Forum
- European Cosmetic Ingredients database (CosInc)
- Everything Added to Food in the United States (EAFUS) database, FDA
- Henriette's Herbal
- HerbMed
- Herbal Library, American Botanical Council
- Herbal information, USDA (dietary supplements)
- Herbs and Supplements, MedlinePlus
- Personal Care Council's International Nomenclature of Cosmetic Ingredients database (INCI)
- U.S. Pharmacopeial Convention (USP)
Botanical plant information links
- Agroforestree Database
- Aromatic and Medicinal Plants Index (Purdue University)
- EOL - Encyclopedia of Life
- Flora of North America
- GRIN Taxonomy for Plants (USDA-GRIN)
- Germplasm Resources Information Network (USDA-GRIN)
- Integrated Taxonomic Information System (ITIS)
- International Plant Names Index (IPNI)
- Medicinal Plant Photos (Steven Foster)
- PLANTS Database (USDA-PLANTS)
- Royal Horticultural Society Horticultural database (RHS)
- The Plant List (Kew, MOBOT, etc.)
- Tropicos (Missouri Bot Garden)
- Wikispecies (Wikipedia)
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