Plant · P-032

Stevia

Stevia rebaudiana

A soft-stemmed member of the daisy family grown for leaves so sweet that dried and ground they replace sugar outright - the main compound is roughly 300 times sweeter than table sugar. It comes from the marshy grassland edges of southern Brazil and Paraguay and wants full sun on soil that drains well and never floods; overwatering rots its shallow feeder roots. Frost kills it outright, so it survives the winter only where the ground never freezes and is grown as a fast annual everywhere else. The leaves grow sweeter as days shorten toward flowering, so growers pinch off the buds and hold the harvest until the plant is nearly ready to bloom.