Purple asparagus was originally developed in Italy, near the city of Albenga and commercialized under the variety name 'Violetto d' Albenga'. Purple asparagus differs from its green and white counterparts in having high sugar and low fibre levels. This variety does not need to lie dormant and blooms at 7 ☌ (45 ☏), rather than the usual 9 ☌ (48 ☏). Ī breed of 'early-season asparagus' that can be harvested two months earlier than usual was announced by a UK grower in early 2011. 'Crowns' are planted in winter, and the first shoots appear in spring the first pickings or 'thinnings' are known as sprue asparagus. The fertility of the soil is a large factor. Some places are better for growing asparagus than others. Thus, a little salt was traditionally used to suppress weeds in beds intended for asparagus this has the disadvantage that the soil cannot be used for anything else. Since asparagus often originates in maritime habitats, it thrives in soils that are too saline for normal weeds to grow.

In Turkish, asparagus is known as kuşkonmaz, literally ' bird won't land ', in reference to the shape of the plant. The name 'sparrow grass' was still in common use in rural East Anglia, England well into the twentieth century. This term itself derives from the Greek aspharagos or asparagos, but the Greek terms are of uncertain provenance: the latter form admits the possibility of a Proto-Indo-European root meaning 'to jerk, scatter,' directly or via a Persian descendant meaning 'twig, branch' but the Ancient Greek word itself, meaning 'gully, chasm,' seems to be of Pre-Greek origin instead.Īsparagus was corrupted in some places to 'sparrow grass' indeed, John Walker wrote in 1791 that ' Sparrowgrass is so general that asparagus has an air of stiffness and pedantry'. The English word asparagus derives from classical Latin but the plant was once known in English as sperage, from the Medieval Latin sparagus. officinalis is widely known simply as 'asparagus', and may be confused with unrelated plant species also known as 'asparagus', such as Ornithogalum pyrenaicum known as 'Prussian asparagus' for its edible shoots. The smell has been reported to be detectable 15 to 30 minutes after ingestion and subsides with a half-life of approximately four hours. The onset of the asparagus urine smell is remarkably rapid while the decline is slower. The biological mechanism for the production of these compounds is less clear. As these are more present in young asparagus, this accords with the observation that the smell is more pronounced after eating young asparagus. These compounds originate in the asparagus as asparagusic acid and its derivatives, as these are the only sulfur-containing compounds unique to asparagus. This was first investigated in 1891 by Marceli Nencki, who attributed the smell to methanethiol. A mixture of these compounds form a 'reconstituted asparagus urine' odor. Subjectively, the first two are the most pungent, while the last two (sulfur-oxidized) give a sweet aroma. Some of the volatile organic compounds responsible for the smell are: Chemistry Īsparagus foliage turns bright yellow in autumn.Ĭertain compounds in asparagus are metabolized to yield ammonia and various sulfur-containing degradation products, including various thiols and thioesters, which following consumption give urine a characteristic smell. It is treated as a distinct species, Asparagus prostratus Dumort, by some authors. prostratus (Dumort.) Corb., distinguished by its low-growing, often prostrate stems growing to only 30–70 centimetres (12–28 in) high, and shorter cladodes 2–18 mm ( 3⁄ 32– 23⁄ 32 in) long. Plants native to the western coasts of Europe (from northern Spain to northwest Germany, north Ireland, and Great Britain) are treated as Asparagus officinalis subsp. The fruit is a small red berry 6–10 mm ( 1⁄ 4– 13⁄ 32 in) in diameter, which is toxic to humans. It is usually dioecious, with male and female flowers on separate plants, but sometimes hermaphrodite flowers are found.

The flowers are bell-shaped, greenish-white to yellowish, 4.5–6.5 mm ( 3⁄ 16– 1⁄ 4 in) long, with six tepals partially fused together at the base they are produced singly or in clusters of two or three in the junctions of the branchlets. The root system, often referred to as a 'crown', is adventitious and the root type is fasciculated. The 'leaves' are in fact needle-like cladodes ( modified stems) in the axils of scale leaves they are 6–32 millimetres ( 1⁄ 4– 1 + 1⁄ 4 inches) long and 1 mm ( 1⁄ 32 in) broad, and clustered four to 15 together, in a rose-like shape. Asparagus is a herbaceous, perennial plant growing to 100–150 centimetres (40–60 inches) tall, with stout stems with much-branched, feathery foliage.

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