The Herbarium
Part IV · Fruit & vegetable
Herb. No. 196
Spinach
Spinacia oleracea
Amaranthaceae
A Persian green that bolts when the days lengthen — cook a pile, because it vanishes in the pan.
Kitchen leaf. Oxalate-rich — food, not a daily gallon of raw juice.
- Parts used
- Leaf
- Traditional notes
- Kitchen green · Traditional cooked leafy
- Grow · USDA 6b
- Cool-season annual. Bolts in long days and heat. Very early spring and again in late summer. Successions. In work: Mar · Apr · May · Sep · Oct · Nov
- Harvest
- Cut-and-come-again, or a whole plant before it towers.
- Long days make it bolt. That is physics, not a moral failing.
- Wash twice. Sand lives in the crown.
Safety
Spinach juice as an iron protocol A gallon raw every morning
Companions
Plant with Beet, Borage, Carrot, Garlic, Heartsease, Onion.
Lore
Persian aspanākh. The Arabs took it west; medieval Spain sent it north. Popeye’s can was a 20th-century cartoon about iron, based on a decimal-point error that nutrition textbooks copied for decades. The kitchen already knew it as a green that disappears when you cook it, which is why you pick a pile.
The Herbarium — a teaching catalog, not a clinic. Traditional use is history, not a prescription. USDA 6b dates are a week either way, not a promise. Do not eat, drink, or harvest a plant you cannot name.