RECENT CHINESE VEGETABLES. 185 



fornia Peppergrass. It was recommended as being extra fine for 

 salads, dressing and garnishing, and unlike anything else known. 

 We find it a very beautiful and valuable thing, and unlike any- 

 thing else of the sort. It seems to be halfway between a cress 

 and a mustard. Its leaves are long and narrow, deeply laciniated, 

 fimbriated and crinkled, making it one of the prettiest green foli- 

 age plants we ever saw. To the taste the leaves are sharp, and 

 have much the flavor of peppergrass. It is excellent when mixed 

 with lettuce or other salads to which it imparts a very fine flavor. 

 For garnishing there is nothing more beautiful. It grows very 

 quickly, and to keep up a succession all summer several sowings 

 must be made. We think its flavor much improved if bleached a 

 few days before cutting by covering with boxes or boards. ' ' Our 

 own experience with the plant confirms the above account of its 

 behavior. It is one of the best plants for early spring "greens," 

 as it grows very quickly, is hardy, and it makes a ver}- compact 

 tuft of crisp and beautiful leaves. The illustration in Plate I 

 shows a plant when in condition for the table, but the specimen 

 from which the photograph was taken was wilted, so that the 

 compact growth of the young plant is not apparent. 



I recognized this plant as a probable cut-leaved and crinkled 

 form of a garden mustard which I had known from boyhood, but 

 the botanical position of which I had never been able to determine. 

 There is a tradition in the family that the seed of this mustard was 

 brought into western Michigan in the early days from Maryland. 

 In my father's garden, the plant has maintained itself for at least 

 twenty-five years, coming up early each spring from self-sown 

 seed. The crisp tufts of May herbage have always been a favor- 

 ite for spring "greens." I have also found this plant, with leaves 

 almost as much cut as in the California Peppergrass, in a garden 

 at Lansing, Mich., and John K. Small has collected the same 

 form ' 'about the neglected garden of Wells Miller, on the summit 

 of White Top Mountain, Washington Co., Virginia."* 



The plant appears, therefore, to be widely distributed in this 

 country, and the wonder is that neither American horticulturists 

 nor botanists appear to have made any record of it ; and I am not 

 able to trace it in the garden literature of Europe. It appears to. 



* Specimen in Torrey Herbarium, Columbia College. 



