Plants

The plants they discovered toc Other plants:



· amaranth (as grain) · arrowroot · avocado · common beans · cashew · chicle · chirimoya · coca · cocoa · cotton · huckleberry · maize · papaya · passionfruit · peanut · pineapple · potato · pumpkin · strawberry · sunflower · sweet potato · tobacco · tomato · vanilla



=** Nature of America **= Is a series of self adhesive stamp sheets that the USTS has been releasing annually since 1999 till 2010 starting with the Sonoran Desert sheet and ending with the Hawaiin Rain Forest Sheet.

A perennial plant about two feet high, arrowroot has small white flowers; and fruits about the size and form of currants. The rootstocks are dug when the plant is a year old, and often exceed 1 foot (30 cm) in length and 0.75 inches (19 mm) in diameter. They are yellowish white, jointed and covered with loose scales.

The plant is naturalized in Florida, but it is chiefly cultivated in the West South Indies (Jamaica and St.Vicent), Australia, Souneast Asia, and South and East Africa. It used to be very popular in British cuisine, and Napoleon supposedly said the reason for the British love of arrowroot was to support their colonies. Arrowroot is used as an article of diet in the form ofbiscuits,puddings, jellies, cakes,sauces, etc., and also withbeef tea, milk or veal broth, noodles in Korean and Vietnamese cuisine. In the Victorian era it was used, boiled with a little flavoring added, as an easily digestible food for children and people with dietary restrictions. With today's greater understanding of its limited nutritional properties, it is no longer used in this way. Arrowroot makes clear, shimmering fruit gels and prevents ice crystals from forming in homemade ice cream. It can also be used as a thickener for acidic foods, such as Asian sweet and sour sauce. It is invaluable in cooking when you wish to have a clear, thickened sauce, for example, a fruit sauce. It will not make the sauce go cloudy, as for example will cornstarch, flour or other starchy thickening agents. The lack of gluten in arrowroot flour makes it useful as a replacement for wheat flour in baking. Like other pure starches, however, arrowroot is almost pure carbohydrate and devoid of protein, thus it does not equal wheat flour nutritionally.



=the chirimoya =