A plant with roots or shoots resembling a bear's foot, or possibly a variant name for certain root vegetables with thick, claw-like roots.
From Old English 'bera' (bear) and 'coot' (foot or root). The etymology connects to how bear paws and plant roots were both visualized as gripping or clawing into the ground.
Pre-modern botanists were incredibly literal—if the root looked like a bear's foot print, that's what they named it, creating a visual dictionary written in plant shapes!
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