1
Basil
Ocimum basilicum
A fragrant Mediterranean herb central to Italian, Thai, and Vietnamese cuisines — with dozens of varieties from sweet Genovese to lemon to holy Thai basil, each with distinct flavor profiles.
Looking for 5-letter vegetables? Here are 12 vegetables that fit — each linked to a full profile.
Letters are counted across the whole name with spaces, hyphens, apostrophes, and diacritics excluded. "Apple Pie" is 8 letters; "Boeuf Bourguignon" is 16.
List of 5-letter Vegetables
2
Camas
Camassia quamash
A North American native bulb that was a major staple food for Plateau and Pacific Northwest indigenous peoples — slow-roasted in earth ovens to convert its complex carbohydrates into intensely sweet caramelized food.
3
Canna
Canna edulis (now Canna indica)
An edible canna lily — the same showy garden flower whose underground rhizomes were a major Andean food crop, still grown in South America and Asia for starch production.
4
Caper
Capparis spinosa
The unopened flower bud of the caper bush, pickled or salt-cured to develop its sharp, briny, faintly lemony flavor — an indispensable accent in Mediterranean cooking and classic sauces from piccata to tapenade.
5
Chard
Beta vulgaris subsp. cicla
A leafy green relative of beets — eaten for its tender leaves and crunchy stems, with rainbow chard varieties bringing dramatic red, yellow, pink, and orange stem colors to plates.
6
Chaya
Cnidoscolus aconitifolius
A leafy green from Mexico's Yucatan — once a Mayan staple, with stinging hairs that disappear after 5 minutes of cooking and exceptional protein-and-iron levels making it an emerging "tree spinach" in tropical agriculture.
7
Dulse
Palmaria palmata
A purple-red Atlantic seaweed eaten as a salty mineral-rich snack and umami ingredient — Maritime Canadian and Irish-Scottish coastal traditions, with a recently-discovered "tastes like bacon when fried" property.
8
Mâche
Valerianella locusta
The tenderest of salad leaves — small, velvety rosettes with a mild, nutty, slightly sweet flavour; a classic French winter salad green harvested when almost everything else in the garden has died back; sold as lamb's lettuce in Britain and corn salad in North America.
9
Nopal
Opuntia ficus-indica
The flat, paddle-shaped pad of the prickly pear cactus — eaten across Mexico as a vegetable, slicing into salads, stews, and grilled tacos with a slightly tart green flavor.
10
Onion
Allium cepa
A pungent edible bulb that forms the aromatic foundation of cuisines worldwide, with hundreds of varieties from sweet to sulfurous.
11
Tarwi
Lupinus mutabilis
An Andean lupin bean with extraordinarily high protein content (over 40%) — a traditional Peruvian and Bolivian staple that requires extensive water-soaking to remove bitter alkaloids before eating.
12
Xigua
Citrullus lanatus
The Chinese name for watermelon (西瓜, "western melon"), often listed under X for letter-game purposes — a refreshing cucurbit treated as a vegetable in some Chinese cooking applications.
About 5-letter vegetables
That's our current list of vegetables with exactly 5 letters. Need a different length? Try the browse-by-length pills in the sidebar, or combine with a starting letter — for example, 5-letter vegetables that start with A.