Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/79

Cabbage, a plant which is indigenous in Europe and western Asia, is one of the vegetables which has been cultivated from the earliest time. The ancients were well acquainted with it, and certainly possessed several varieties of the head-forming kinds. The great antiquity of its culture may be inferred from the immense number of varieties which are now in existence, and from the very important modifications which have been produced in the characteristics in the original or parent plant.

The wild cabbage, such as it now exists on the coasts of England and France, is a perennial plant with broad-lobed, undulated, thick, smooth leaves, covered with a glaucous bloom. The stem attains a height of from nearly two and a half to over three feet, and bears at the top a spike of yellow or sometimes white flowers. All the cultivated varieties present the same peculiarities in their inflorescence, but up to the time of flowering they exhibit most marked differences from each other and from the original wild plant. In most of the cabbages it is chiefly the leaves that are developed by cultivation; these for the most part become imbricated or overlap one another closely, so as to form a more or less compact head, the heart or interior of which is composed of the central undeveloped shoot and the younger leaves next it. The shape of the head is spherical, sometimes flattened, sometimes conical. All the varieties which form heads in this way are known by the general name of cabbages, while other kinds with large branching leaves which never form heads are distinguished by the name of borecole or kale.

In some kinds the flower stems have been so modified by culture as to become transformed into a thick, fleshy, tender mass, the growth and enlargement of which are produced at the expense of the flowers, which are absorbed and rendered abortive. Such are the broccolis and cauliflowers.

But this plant has other transformations.

In other kinds the leaves retain their ordinary dimensions, while the stem or principal root has been brought by cultivation to assume the shape of a large ball or turnip, as in the case of the plants known as kohl-rabi and turnip-rooted cabbage or Swedish turnip. And, lastly, there are varieties in which cultivation and selection have produced modifications in the ribs of the leaves, as in their couve tronchuda, or in the axillary shoots (as in Brussels sprouts), or in several organs together, as in the marrow kales and the Neapolitan curled kale.

Here are important morphological changes like those to which Prof. Bailey has called attention in the case of the tomato.

Suppose we are strolling along the beach at some of the seaside resorts of France, and should fall in with this coarse cruciferous plant, with its sprawling leaves and strong odor. Would there be anything in its appearance to lead us to search for its hidden merit as a food-plant? What could we see in it which would give it a preference over a score of other plants at our feet? Again, suppose we are journeying in the highlands of Peru, and should meet with a strong-smelling plant of the nightshade family, bearing a small irregular fruit, of subacid taste and of peculiar flavor. We will further imagine that the peculiar taste strikes our fancy, and we conceive that the plant has possibilities as a source of food. We should be led by our knowledge of the potato, probably a native of the same region, to think that this allied plant