Betel is a climbing plant grown for its leaf. The leaf smells fresh and tastes a little sharp, a bit like pepper. In much of South and Southeast Asia — and in Taiwan too — people chew it. Though actually, what you often see being chewed is not the leaf alone: a hard areca nut (from a different palm) is wrapped with slaked lime inside a betel leaf. English speakers commonly call that nut a “betel nut,” but the nut does not come from the betel plant. The leaf gives the chew its scent; the nut is the strong part, and the mouth and spit turn red. In Taiwan the street habit and the health warnings are about that chew as a whole; the English word betel is pointing at the leaf plant in the wrap.