To be honest people eat basil and rosemary leaves not the wood part. So the same could be said about bay leaves, no one bites the tree itself

True wood? Wood was reinvented multiple times.

I thought shrubs were defined from multiple stem growth

That reminds me, I must go check if the oregano is ready to harvest.

Edit: I'll check again in two weeks

So… are they spices? Like cinnamon?

Bananas are berries

Say 'what' one more time motherfucker

shrubabbaby

shrubry

shurubaby

Basilicum makes wood, obviously.

Herb

Outstanding meme abuse.

The other side of this coin is that the banana is the largest herb; the banana tree is the tallest plant that doesn't produce wood

Of course mixing up culinary and botany meanings deliberately is dumb and leads to people saying things like "a tomato is a fruit" and "a strawberry isn't a berry" those people can go produce their own wood if you know what I mean

Rosemary does grow like a shrub if you let it. A regular size one.

Strawberries are not berries (but aggregate accessory fruits). Cucumber, watermelon and pumpkin belong to the same family of plants. Tomatoes are fruit. Well botanically, vegetables do not exist anyway. Vegetables are a social construct. Also, wheat is a kind of grass. Isn't our world beautiful?

Sub-shrub

So I should put them on sandwiches? 🤔

aren't herbs

What on Earth is that bird's definition of an "herb"? A pretty uncontroversial definition from Wikipedia:

Herbs generally refers to the leafy green or flowering parts of a plant (either fresh or dried), while spices are usually dried and produced from other parts of the plant, including seeds, bark, roots and fruits.

And what the goddamn hell is "true wood" supposed to distinguish? Do plants grow the faux wood that I can buy at Lowe's? Rosemary is a woody shrub and, like basil, is in the family Lamiaceae with a bunch of other herbs.

"Shrubs" and "herbs" are not mutually exclusive (and basil isn't a shrub – a woody perennial – anyway). wtaf is the logic here; there's pedantry, and then there's fucking nonsense pulled out of thin air.

Edit: Wait, is the comic talking about herbaceous plants (shortened in botany as “herbs”)? Because in that case, 1) that’s not news in botanical terms for rosemary, 2) basil is an herbaceous annual, 3) why did it single out rosemary and basil if it didn’t mean to imply a culinary sense, and 4) still what the hell did it mean by “true wood”? It’s simultaneously less and more confusing.

Wait, basil?

Rosemary, I get (and also thyme, btw), but basil? At best, the dried out stalks of a basil can look a bit woody, but that's true for a lot of plants.

Everyone in here talking about science and my stupid ass thought this was a reference to the song Scarborough fair