Habanero pepper

A cool-weather leafy cabbage relative grown for its broad, leathery, blue-green leaves that grow in a loose upright rosette on a thick stem - never forming a head ("acephala" is Greek for headless). A biennial almost always grown as an annual, it sweetens after a fall frost and, in mild-winter regions, keeps producing leaves through winter until it bolts in spring. One of the most cold-tolerant vegetables in the cabbage family.

A low, sprawling nightshade grown for the sweet golden berries that ripen inside papery, lantern-like husks and drop to the ground when ready - hence "ground cherry." Soft, slightly hairy stems with heart-shaped toothed leaves carry small yellowish bell-shaped flowers all summer. Grown like a tomato, it is a tender annual in most of the US but can persist as a short-lived perennial where frost is absent.

A fast cool-season annual of the mustard family grown for its peppery, mustard-like salad greens - irregular, pinnately-lobed basal leaves in a low rosette, each with 4 to 10 small lateral lobes and a large terminal lobe (Missouri Botanical Garden). First cultivated by the ancient Greeks and Romans and still widely grown across Europe, it is best grown in the cooler spring and fall months rather than summer heat; leaves are harvested young and tender before they turn strong and bitter. Pale-yellow four-petalled flowers with dark brown or purple veins appear in corymbs if plants are left to bloom.

A fast, cool-season leafy annual grown for its tender, vitamin-rich basal rosette of leaves - an excellent source of vitamins A, B, and C plus iron and phosphorus per the Missouri Botanical Garden. Cultivated in Europe since the 1400s and probably native to western Asia, it crops best in the cool temperatures of spring and fall and bolts (sends up greenish-yellow flower spikes of no ornamental value) once summer heat arrives, after which the leaves deteriorate.