Tag: Stem vegetable

While potatoes and sweet potatoes both grow underground, a potato is a modified stem (tuber) while a sweet potato is a true root. Understanding how to classify vegetables by the part of the plant we eat can be tricky, especially with common culinary names vs. botanical definitions.

Surprisingly, despite growing underground, a potato is a stem vegetable. The common misclassification stems from its appearance and subterranean growth, but botanically, it is an edible tuber, a type of thickened, modified stem. The features found on a potato prove its stem-like nature.