54 THE STORY OF PLANT EFS 
Garlic, Dame’s Violet, Cabbage, Rocket, Whitlow 
Grass, Alyssum, Scurvy Grass, Gold of Pleasure, 
Awlwort, Shepherd’s Purse, Wart Cress, Pepper- 
wort, Penny Cress, Candy Tuft, Teesdale’s Cress, 
Woad, Sea Kale, Sea Rocket, and Charlock. 
Everyone knows what a disagreeable odour comes 
from rotting cabbage, and this is due to the fact that 
the Cruciferze are very rich in nitrogenous matter, 
and are thus valuable as articles of diet, most of our 
vegetables and salads being derived from the order. 
It thus affords cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, 
turnip, radish, rape, swede, navew, and mustard, 
cress, sea kale, and amongst salads, water cress and 
winter cress. The Stock, Wallflower, and Candy- 
tuft, with Sweet Alyssum, are old and familiar 
favourites in the flower garden. Woad has always 
been associated with our earliest ancestors as a plant 
with the dye of which they dyed themselves blue. It 
is still used as a fixing agent for indigo and cultivated 
at Wisbech for that purpose. 
Most of the plants of this order have a very hot, 
biting flavour, e.g. Cress, Water Cress, and are 
highly stimulating, pungent, and contain sulphur. 
Some, such as Scurvy Grass, have been used for 
scurvy, and many are acrid. They yield also valuable 
oil, such as rape and colza. 
All the members of this homogeneous order agree 
in having four sepals and four petals alternating. 
The petals are arranged in a cruciform manner, 
crosswise. There are six stamens, two shorter than 
