Recipes starting with P

The papaya is a large, tree-like plant, with a single stem growing from 5 to 10 m (16 to 33 ft) tall, with spirally arranged leaves confined to the top of the trunk. The lower trunk is conspicuously scarred where leaves and fruit were borne. The leaves are large, 50–70 cm (20–28 in) in diameter, deeply palmately lobed, with seven lobes. Unusually for such large plants, the trees are dioecious.

The tree is usually unbranched, unless lopped. The flowers are similar in shape to the flowers of the Plumeria, but are much smaller and wax-like. They appear on the axils of the leaves, maturing into large fruit - 15–45 cm (5.9–17.7 in) long and 10–30 cm (3.9–11.8 in) in diameter. The fruit is ripe when it feels soft (as soft as a ripe avocado or a bit softer) and its skin has attained an amber to orange hue.

Parsley is a bright green, biennial, plant in temperate climates, or an annual herb in subtropical and tropical areas.

Where it grows as a biennial, in the first year, it forms a rosette of tripinnate leaves 10–25 cm long with numerous 1–3 cm leaflets, and a taproot used as a food store over the winter. In the second year, it grows a flowering stem to 75 cm tall with sparser leaves and flat-topped 3–10 cm diameter umbels with numerous 2 mm diameter yellow to yellowish-green flowers.

The seeds are ovoid, 2–3 mm long, with prominent style remnants at the apex. One of the compounds of the essential oil is apiol. The plant normally dies after seed maturation.

It is an annual herbaceous plant growing 30 to 50 cm (1.0 to 1.6 ft) tall. The leaves are opposite, pinnate with four leaflets (two opposite pairs; no terminal leaflet); each leaflet is 1 to 7 cm (⅜ to 2¾ in) long and 1 to 3 cm (⅜ to 1 inch) across. The flowers are a typical peaflower in shape, 2 to 4 cm (0.8 to 1.6 in) (¾ to 1½ in) across, yellow with reddish veining. The specific name, hypogaea means "under the earth"; after pollination, the flower stalk elongates, causing it to bend until the ovary touches the ground. Continued stalk growth then pushes the ovary underground where the mature fruit develops into a legume pod, the peanut – a classical example of geocarpy. Pods are 3 to 7 cm (1.2 to 2.8 in) long, containing 1 to 4 seeds.

This perennial plant, in habit and appearance like the chamomile, has stems that lie on the ground for part of their length, before rising erect. Each bears one large flower, the disk being yellow and the rays white, tinged with purple beneath. The leaves are smooth, alternate, and pinnate, with deeply-cut segments.

The root is almost cylindrical, very slightly twisted and tapering and often crowned with a tuft of grey hairs. Externally it is brown and wrinkled, with bright black spots. The fracture is short, and the transverse section, magnified, presents a beautiful radiate structure and many oleoresin glands. The taste is pungent and odour slight.

Pepper plants are climbers which grow to a height or length of 10 m or more. When its main stem is established, it grows lots of side shoots to create a bushy column.

The plants form short roots, called adventitious roots, which connect to surrounding supports.

Although black pepper is cultivated in many tropical regions, it is native to Kerala State in India where it still occurs wild in the mountains.

Leaves - arranged alternately on the stems. They are shaped like almonds and taper towards the tip. They are dark green and shiny above but paler green below.

Flowers - grow in clusters along flowering stalks known as spikes. Between 50 to 150 whitish to yellow-green flowers are produced on a spike.

Fruits - the flowers develop into round, berry-like fruits. There may be 50-60 fruits on each spike. They grow to a diameter of 4 to 6 mm, each containing a single seed. Fruits are green at first but they turn red as they ripen. These fruits are picked when either green or red to produce black and white pepper.

It is a herbaceous rhizomatous perennial plant growing to 30–90 cm (12–35 in) tall, with smooth stems, square in cross section. The rhizomes are wide-spreading, fleshy, and bare fibrous roots. The leaves are from 4–9 cm (1.6–3.5 in) long and 1.5–4 cm (0.59–1.57 in) broad, dark green with reddish veins, and with an acute apex and coarsely toothed margins. The leaves and stems are usually slightly fuzzy. The flowers are purple, 6–8 mm (0.24–0.31 in) long, with a four-lobed corolla about 5 mm (0.20 in) diameter; they are produced in whorls (verticillasters) around the stem, forming thick, blunt spikes.

Flowering is from mid to late summer. The chromosome number is variable, with 2n counts of 66, 72, 84, and 120 recorded. Peppermint is a fast growing plant once it sprouts, it spreads very quickly.

The trees are large, growing to 40 metres (130 ft) tall, with evergreen pinnate leaves 15 centimetres (5.9 in) long, with 5–13 leaflets. The flowers are white with yellow stamens, produced in racemes. The fruit is a pod 7–11 centimetres (2.8–4.3 in) long, containing a single seed.

The wood is dark brown, with a deep red heartwood. Natural oils grant it excellent decay resistance. In fact, it is also resistant to preservative treatment. Its specific gravity is 0.74 to 0.81.

Adonis vernalis is a PERENNIAL growing to 0.3 m (1ft) by 0.3 m (1ft in).

It is in flower in March, and the seeds ripen from May to June. The flowers are hermaphrodite (have both male and female organs) and are pollinated by Bees, flies, beetles.The plant is self-fertile.

The root-stock is slender, the stem also slender, round, striate, 9 inches to 3 feet high. The root-leaves are numerous, shortly stalked, pinnate, the leaflets oval or roundish, four to eight pairs, sometimes so deeply cut as to be bipinnate, sometimes merely serrated. The stem-leaves are few, with the petiole dilated, particularly in the uppermost ones, the leaflets narrower than in the radical leaves, and pinnatifid. The upper leaves are reduced to dilated sheaths, the leaflets represented by one or more linear lobes. The umbels are regular, flattopped, the umbelules many-flowered, the individual flowers 1/10 inch across, white, with notched petals. The whole plant is dark green, generally glabrous.

Trees to 60 m tall and 1.8 m dbh. Mature trees follow the usual Agathis model of a long clear bole with a broad emergent crown of large rigid first-order branches. The authorities differ in opinion about the bark, calling it gray, red-gray, light brown, or black, finely dimpled to thinly scaly or with many resin blisters, or rough, exfoliating thus with few epiphytes. Leaves sub-opposite, thick, coriaceous, light to dark green, highly variable even on a single tree. On young trees lanceolate, acuminate, 3x7 cm to 3.5x13 cm.

On adult trees long-oval with a rounded apex, 4-8x1.5-3 cm, with a 1-8 mm petiole. Pollen cones axillary, solitary on a stout 3-4 peduncle, at anthesis small cylinders with straight sides, surface firm, smooth; 6-8 mm diameter × 12-20 mm; ultimately becoming dark brown, slightly flexuous cylinders, 10×30-40 mm, with the surface loose; basal bracts form a loose, often squarish cupule, less than, equal to, or exceeding cone width, rarely with 2 bracts enlarged, leafy, 10×30 mm.

Microsporophylls at anthesis are imbricate, to 2 mm across, without a distinctly demarcated thin margin; edge erose; head in adaxial view round, 1.5-2 mm across, becoming 2.5×1.5 mm in the largest cones; thick in the center, tapering gradually to thin edges. Female cone globular or ovoid, 5.5-12 cm long by 5-7.8 cm wide; cone scales nearly triangular, upper corners of scales are broadly rounded and thin. Seed subovoid, to 1.5 cm long, one wing to 1.3 cm long, another much shorter

Pinus sylvestris is an evergreen coniferous tree growing up to 35 m in height and 1 m trunk diameter when mature, exceptionally to 45 m tall and 1.7 m trunk diameter[citation needed] and on very productive sites (in Estonia, there are some 220-year-old trees that are 46 metres tall in the forests of Järvselja). The bark is thick, scaly dark grey-brown on the lower trunk, and thin, flaky and orange on the upper trunk and branches.

The habit of the mature tree is distinctive due to its long, bare and straight trunk topped by a rounded or flat-topped mass of foliage. The lifespan is normally 150–300 years, with the oldest recorded specimens (in Sweden and Norway) just over 700 years.

The shoots are light brown, with a spirally arranged scale-like pattern. On mature trees the leaves ('needles') are a glaucous blue-green, often darker green to dark yellow-green in winter, 2.5–5 cm long and 1–2 mm broad, produced in fascicles of two with a persistent grey 5–10 mm basal sheath; on vigorous young trees the leaves can be twice as long, and occasionally occur in fascicles of three or four on the tips of strong shoots.

Leaf persistence varies from two to four years in warmer climates, and up to nine years in subarctic regions. Seedlings up to one year old bear juvenile leaves; these are single (not in pairs), 2–3 cm long, flattened, with a serrated margin.

Mature open cones and seeds

The seed cones are red at pollination, then pale brown, globose and 4–8 mm diameter in their first year, expanding to full size in their second year, pointed ovoid-conic, green, then grey-green to yellow-brown at maturity, 3-7.5 cm in length. The cone scales have a flat to pyramidal apophysis, with a small prickle on the umbo.

The seeds are blackish, 3–5 mm long with a pale brown 12–20 mm wing; they are released when the cones open in spring 22–24 months after pollination. The pollen cones are yellow, occasionally pink, 8–12 mm long; pollen release is in mid to late spring

It is a herbaceous biennial plant that grows between 1.5–2.5 metres (5–8 ft) tall, with a smooth green hollow stem, usually spotted or streaked with red or purple on the lower half of the stem. All parts of the plant are hairless (glabrous). The leaves are 2-4-pinnate, finely divided and lacy, overall triangular in shape, up to 50 centimetres (20 in) long and 40 centimetres (16 in) broad. The flowers are small, white, clustered in umbels up to 10–15 centimetres (4–6 in) across. When crushed, the leaves and root emit a rank, unpleasant odour often compared to that of parsnips. It produces a large number of seeds that allow the plant to form thick stands in modified soils.

An attractive shrub or small tree, to 20 or 30 ft (6 or 10 m) high, the Pomegranate is much-branched, more or less spiny.

An extremely long-lived species, some specimens at Versailles are known to have survived two centuries. The leaves are evergreen or deciduous, opposite or in whorls of 5 or 6, short-stemmed, oblong-lanceolate, 3/8 to 4 in (1-10 cm) long and leathery. Showy flowers are home on the branch tips singly or as many as 5 in a cluster.

They are 1 1/4 in (3 cm) wide and characterized by the thick, tubular, red calyx having 5 to 8 fleshy, pointed sepals forming a vase from which emerge the 3 to 7 crinkled, red, white or variegated petals enclosing the numerous stamens. Nearly round, but crowned at the base by the prominent calyx, the fruit, 2 1/2 to 5 in (6.25-12.5 cm) wide, has a tough, leathery skin or rind, basically yellow more or less overlaid with light or deep pink or rich red.

The interior is separated by membranous walls and white spongy tissue (rag) into compartments packed with transparent sacs filled with tart, flavorful, fleshy, juicy, red, pink or whitish pulp (technically the aril). In each sac, there is one white or red, angular, soft or hard seed. The seeds represent about 52% of the weight of the whole fruit.

The plant is an annual herb which readily germinates from seeds. The branching stems have fine white or purple-red hair all along, especially at the flowering part. The flower stems are quite slender, and holds the solitary and terminal flowers. The bud is hanged upside down and then assumes a normal position just before blossoming. The stems have a white milky sap.

Most of the leaves are more or less found at the middle or lower part of the stem, leaving the flowers more conspicuous. They are stalked, oppositely arranged on the stems, and are so deeply pinnately divided, that each pinna (leaf lobe) is independent. They also have a coarsely serrated outline. The leaf pinnae and serrated outline varies from plant to plant.

The flower consists of 2 hairy sepals and 4 bright red to red-crimson petals, often having a dark blob at the base. The blob also varies from plant to plant and some may even lack it. The petals are fragile (detaches easily from the flower) and their size vary considerably, but can form flowers of about 50mm in diameter. At the center there is a globular or pot-shaped gynoecium that is pale green in colour and has radiating darker stripes at the top. The stigma are found upon these stripes. Encircling the base of the gynoecium is a cluster of many black stamens with anthers that may be covered with pale yellow or grey pollen.

The fruit is a seed capsule which is pale green and turns yellowish or light brown when the seeds matures. The glabrous seed-capsule is pot-shaped with a flattened top (lid) that has a slightly serrated circumference. The dehiscent poricidal capsule is operculate (possess a lid structure). It does not split open, but instead, the tiny (1mm), brown, kidney shaped seeds escape from pores at the lid part of the capsule when wind causes it to sway.

The plant is an erect, herbaceous annual, varying much in the color of its flowers, as well as in the shape of the fruit and colour of the seeds. All parts of the plant, but particularly the walls of the capsules, or seed-vessels, contain a system of laticiferous vessels, filled with a white latex.

The flowers vary in colour from pure white to reddish purple. In the wild plant, they are pale lilac with a purple spot at the base of each petal.

The capsules vary much in shape and size. They are usually hemispherical, but depressed at the top, where the many-rayed stigma occupies the centre; they have a swollen ring below where the capsule joins the stalk. Some varieties are ovoid, others again depressed both at summit and base.

The small kidney-shaped seeds, minute and very numerous, are attached to lateral projections from the inner walls of the capsule and vary in colour from whitish to slate. The heads are of a pale glaucous green when young. As they mature and ripen they change to a yellowish brown, and are then cut from the stem if the dried poppy heads are required.