Q.Two of the vegetables we consume are nothing but leaf bases. Which are they?

Step 1. Recall that the leaf base (hypopodium) can take different forms — pulvinus (swollen), sheathing, or ligulate — and that in a bulb the fleshy, food-storing scale leaves are arranged concentrically around a much-reduced discoid stem.

Step 2. In an onion, what is eaten is this bulb: layer upon layer of swollen, fleshy leaf bases wrapped around the tiny central stem — so the edible part is essentially leaf-base tissue, not root or true stem. …

Recall which common vegetables are structurally leaf-base tissue rather than true root or stem, using the sheathing/pulvinus …

• Calling the onion bulb a root, when it is actually a much-reduced stem wrapped in fleshy leaf bases. …