Celosia greens (Celosia argentea) are the tender leaves and soft shoot tips of the celosia plant, grown as a leaf vegetable across West Africa and known in Nigeria as soko or soko yokoto and in English as Lagos spinach. The same species is famous in gardens the world over as the plumed and crested cockscomb flower, but the food form is a leafy strain picked young and bushy, long before it runs up to bloom. Mild, soft and faintly earthy when cooked, the leaves wilt down tender and sweet with a gentle spinach-like flavour, and are simmered into the thick, oily leaf stews — efo riro and other efo dishes — that are a staple of Yoruba and wider Nigerian cooking, as well as boiled, sautéed and stirred into soups across the humid tropics.