This section is from the book "The Home Cyclopedia Of General Information", by Charles Morris. Also available from Amazon: Home Cyclopedia of Necessary Knowledge.
[L.] A plant grown for food, as the cabbage, potato, turnip, etc. The vegetable kingdom is the primary division of living things, which includes all plants, and is divided into Phanerogamia, or plants having distinct flowers and seeds - sub-divided into exogens (q.v.), end-ogens (q.v.), and gymnosperms; and Crypto-gamia, or plants without true flowers, and reproduced by minute spores, - subdivided into ferns, mosses, and liverworts, and the algae, fungi, and lichens.
 
Continue to: