24-Carrot Gold

The etymology of an invaluable root

We know that carrots were used for medicine long before they were cultivated for food. In the fifth century BC, both Hippocrates (the father of medicine) and the botanist Theophrastus referred to the carrot as δαῦκον (‘daukon’), from which the plant gets its present-day scientific name Daucus. Theirs was evidently not the sweet-tasting carrot of today; …