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Avena
Avena is the grass genus containing oats, with 29 accepted species native from Macaronesia and temperate Eurasia to North Africa and Kenya. Cultivated oat Avena sativa was domesticated from wild A. sterilis about 3,000 years ago; species span diploid, tetraploid, and hexaploid (AACCDD) ploidy levels.
Avena barbata
Avena barbata, slender wild oat or barbed oat, is a selfing tetraploid annual grass (2n=28) native from the Mediterranean to Central Asia, introduced to California where it evolved mesic and xeric ecotypes from at least three introductions.
Avena fatua
Avena fatua (wild oat, 野燕麦) is an annual hexaploid grass weed of cereal crops, native to temperate Eurasia and North Africa, causing up to 70% yield losses and evolving ACCase and ALS herbicide resistance.
Avena sterilis
Avena sterilis (sterile oat, animated oat, winter wild oat) is a hexaploid annual wild grass native from the Mediterranean to the western Himalaya, a major cereal weed, hypothesized progenitor of cultivated oats, with documented ACCase, ALS, and glyphosate resistance.
Avena strigosa
Avena strigosa, black oat or bristle oat, is a diploid cultivated oat (2n=14, As-genome) originating in the Iberian Peninsula, first cultivated in Neolithic Europe, now grown mainly in Brazil as forage and no-till cover crop.
Averrhoa
Averrhoa is a genus of five Oxalidaceae tree species native from Java to New Guinea, including star fruit (A. carambola) and bilimbi (A. bilimbi), cultivated fruits containing neurotoxic caramboxin and oxalic acid.
Averrhoa bilimbi
Averrhoa bilimbi, or tree sorrel, is a small tropical tree in the Oxalidaceae family, native to Malesia and grown for its extremely sour, cucumber-shaped fruit used in cooking.
Avicennia
Avicennia is a genus of eight accepted species of mangrove trees and shrubs in the Acanthaceae family, distinguished by salt-secreting leaf glands, non-dormant seeds, and aerial roots.
Avicennia germinans
Avicennia germinans, black mangrove, is an Acanthaceae mangrove tree native from the SE United States and Caribbean to South America and West Tropical Africa to Angola, with pneumatophores, salt-excreting leaves, and major blue carbon storage.
Awamori (泡盛)
Awamori (泡盛), or Ryukyu awamori, is Okinawa's traditional pot-still distilled rice spirit made with Thai indica rice and black koji mold (Aspergillus luchuensis) via whole koji preparation; aged three years or more it is called kusu, and it is Japan's oldest distilled spirit.
Award of Garden Merit
Award of Garden Merit (AGM), now RHS Recommended: Award of Garden Merit, is a Royal Horticultural Society plant award established in 1922 for Hamamelis mollis, granted after expert trials to reliable, available, stable, disease-resistant garden plants.
Award of Garden Merit tulip cultivars
AGM tulip cultivars are Tulipa varieties granted the RHS Award of Garden Merit, renamed RHS Recommended: AGM in 2026, after Wisley trials; recent trials awarded 28–29 new AGMs per group, e.g. 'Queen of Night'.
Axonopus
Axonopus (carpet grasses) is a genus of about 80-90 Poaceae grasses, tribe Paspaleae, mostly Neotropical, defined by inverse spikelet position; A. compressus and A. fissifolius are tropical lawn and pasture grasses.
Axonopus compressus
Axonopus compressus (broadleaf carpetgrass, blanket grass), a stoloniferous Poaceae grass native to tropical and subtropical America, used as lawn turf, forage, and erosion-control cover crop across the humid tropics.
Azadirachta
Azadirachta A.Juss. (1830), a two-species genus of Meliaceae trees: neem (Azadirachta indica) and A. excelsa, native to tropical Asia, source of the insecticidal limonoid azadirachtin.
Azadirachta indica
Azadirachta indica, neem or margosa, a Meliaceae evergreen tree native from Assam to Indo-China, planted across dry tropics; source of azadirachtin, a limonoid insecticide sensitive to over 550 insect species.
Azalea
An azalea is a flowering shrub in the genus Rhododendron, distinguished from other rhododendrons by five stamens per flower, small thin leaves, and funnel-shaped flowers.
Azaleas
Azaleas (jindallae, 진달래) are deciduous shrubs of the heath family native to Korea that bloom before their leaves, and the title of Kim Sowol's best-known poem, first published in 1922.
Azolla
Azolla (mosquito fern, water fern) is a genus of small floating freshwater ferns in Salviniaceae hosting the nitrogen-fixing cyanobiont Nostoc azollae in leaf cavities; used as a rice biofertilizer and livestock feed, invasive where introduced, and famous for Eocene Arctic fossil blooms.
Azolla pinnata
Azolla pinnata (feathered mosquitofern, water velvet) is a small floating aquatic fern in Salviniaceae with Anabaena azollae in its leaves, used as a rice biofertilizer and feed, but a U.S. federal noxious weed established in Florida.
Azorella
Azorella (yareta, llareta) is a genus of 58 cushion-forming Apiaceae species native from Costa Rica and the Andes to subantarctic islands, Australia, and New Zealand, including the giant long-lived Andean yareta Azorella compacta.
Baby carrot
Baby carrot: either a carrot harvested young or, more commonly, a baby-cut carrot made by cutting and peeling full-size carrots. Invented by Mike Yurosek in California in 1986; 70% of US carrot sales by 2016.
Baccharis
Baccharis L. (Baccharidinae, Asteraceae) is a New World genus of about 400-500 dioecious shrub species from the United States to Argentina, used in folk medicine and including the invasive B. halimifolia.
Bacopa monnieri
Bacopa monnieri, called brahmi or water hyssop, is a creeping wetland herb used in Ayurvedic medicine as a memory enhancer and studied as a nootropic.
Bactris
Bactris, also called the peach palm genus (pejibaye, Bactris gasipaes), is a genus of about 79 spiny Neotropical palms in Arecaceae, native from Mexico to tropical America, known for the domesticated peach palm grown for fruit and palm heart.
Bactris gasipaes
Bactris gasipaes, the peach palm (pupunha, pejibaye, chontaduro), is the only domesticated Neotropical palm, grown in tropical Latin America for starchy fruit and heart-of-palm; raw fruit needs cooking to destroy calcium oxalate crystals.
Baillonella toxisperma
Baillonella toxisperma (moabi, African pearwood, djave nut tree), sole species of its genus in Sapotaceae, a giant Vulnerable Central African rainforest tree valued for durable timber and seed oil, dispersed by forest elephants.
Balanites
Balanites (desert date genus, Agialid synonym) is a genus of nine spiny Zygophyllaceae trees and shrubs from Africa to Myanmar; type species Balanites aegyptiaca yields edible fruit, cooking oil, and steroidal saponins.
Balanites aegyptiaca
Balanites aegyptiaca (desert date, heglig, Ingudi), a Zygophyllaceae tree of African and Arabian drylands, up to about 10 m, with edible fruit, oil-rich kernels (19.8–49.4% oil), saponins, and IUCN Least Concern status.
Ballota
Ballota (horehound) is a Lamiaceae genus of about 30 perennial herbs and shrubs native to Macaronesia, Europe, the Mediterranean, and West Asia; type species Ballota nigra, black horehound; split from Pseudodictamnus in 2018.