Brassica rapa

Plant Characteristics

Habit		herbaceous

Cultivation

Features:	✓	edible

Scientific Names

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Brassica rapa (syn. Brassica campestris), commonly known as field mustard or turnip mustard is a plant widely cultivated as a leaf vegetable (see mizuna), a root vegetable, and an oilseed.

Read about Brassica rapa in the Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture

Brassica rapa, Linn. Common Turnip. Lvs. prominently lyrate or interrupted below, the root tuberous.—Whatever the origin of the rutabaga and turnip may be, the two plants show good botanical characters. The tubers of the two are different in season, texture and flavor. In the rutabaga, the small Ivs. immediately following the seed-lvs. are sparsely hairy, but all subsequent Ivs. are entirely smooth, densely glaucous blue, thick and cabbage-???, with a fleshy petiole and midrib. In the turnip, the radical lvs. are always more or less hairy, and they are green and radish-like, thin, with slender petiole, and the lvs. are much more lyrate, with interrupted Ifts. on the petiole; the small Ivs. following the seed-lvs. are also thinner and narrower and more deeply scalloped. In the rutabaga, the fls. are large and creamy-yellow, whereas in the turnip they are small, yellow and mustard-like, with shorter claws and more spreading calyx. The turnips vary in hairiness, but the cone of expanding lvs., or the "heart- Ivs.," always shows the hairs distinctly, while the heart-lvs. of the rutabagas are normally entirely glabrous, fleshy, and remind one of the young shoots of sea-kale. The turnip usually produces seed freely if the bottoms are left in the ground over winter; and thereby the plant spreads, becoming a true annual and a bad weed, with a slender hard root. Oil-producing forms are var. oleifera, DC. The above text is from the Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture. It may be out of date, but still contains valuable and interesting information which can be incorporated into the remainder of the article. Click on "Collapse" in the header to hide this text.

Cultivar groups

Cultivated varieties of Brassica rapa include:

• Chinese cabbage: Bok choi (chinensis group) and Napa cabbage (pekinensis group)
• Mizuna (nipposinica group)
• Aburana (nippo-oleifera group)
• Flowering cabbage (parachinensis group)
• Turnip (rapa group)
• Turnip rape (Brassica rapa subsp. oleifera)
• Rapini (ruvo group)
• Tatsoi (rosularis group)
• Komatsuna (perviridis or komatsuna group)

Gallery

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References

• Standard Cyclopedia of Horticulture, by L. H. Bailey, MacMillan Co., 1963

External links

• w:Brassica rapa. Some of the material on this page may be from Wikipedia, under the Creative Commons license.
• Brassica rapa QR Code (Size 50, 100, 200, 500)