According to Prutzman (1988), chinamperos today cultivate fifty-eight different agricultural crops, half of which are native, along with numerous ornamentals. Important pre-Hispanic crops include different varieties of maize, beans, chili peppers, tomatoes, amaranth, and squash. Other native crops include greens like purselane and epasote, along with romerito and chia.
Jimenez-Osornio et al. (1990) divide chinampa products into three main categories: maize, vegetables, and flowers (the latter two being most economically important). According to them, vegetables, principally produced in San Gregorio and San Andres Mixquic, occupy 70% of the total area. While flowers are cultivated mostly in the chinampa town of San Luis, Xochimilco and Tetelco emphasize maize production.
Jimenez-Osornio and Gomez-Pompa (1991) conducted a thorough study of the flora of the aforementioned chinampa region of San Andres Mixquic. The two find that the main cash crops grown in these Lake Chalco chinampas are all introduced: Swiss chard (Beta Vulgaris), broccoli (Brassica oleracea) and celery (Apium graveolens).
Moreover, Jimenez-Osornio and Gomez-Pompa record 146 different plant species in San Andres Mixquic, of which fifty-one are domesticated. The two assert that plant diversity in space and time is “remarkable.” For example, they find that one chinampaneca, Don Pedro Nunez, has twenty domesticated species and thirty non-domesticated species growing in his chinampa plots which are 2270 square meters in size. The two also discover that the farmers, with regards to several of their commercial crops, were engaged in “careful selection” of high-performing and locally-developed seeds and were marketing these seeds internally. Jimenez-Osornio and Gomez-Pompa assert that “this is an extraordinary example of the process of crop evolution in one single locality and in a man-made wetland environment.”