STURTEVANT S NOTES ON EDIBLE PLANTS lOI 



of cultivation, a race has been produced as B. campestris Linn., and a second as B. rapa 

 Linn., our white turnip, with many varieties. The cultivation of this plant, indigenous 

 in the region between the Baltic Sea and the Caucasus, was probably first attempted by 

 the Celts and Germans when they were driven to make use of nutritious roots. Buckman 

 was inclined^o the belief that B. campestris and B. napus are but agrarian forms derived 

 from B. oleracea. Nowhere, he asserted, are the first two varieties truly wild but both 

 track cultivation throughout Europe, Asia and America. Lindley says this plant, B. 

 campestris, has been found apparently wild in Lapland, Spain, the Crimea and Great 

 Britain but it is difficvilt to say whether or not it is truly wild. When little changed by 

 cultivation, it is the colsa, colza, or colsat, the chou oleifbre of the French, an oil-reed 

 plant of great value. This is the colsa of Belgium, the east of France, Germany 

 and Switzerland but not of other districts, in which the name is applied to rape. 

 linger ' states that this plant, growing wild from the Baltic Sea to the Caucasus, is 

 the B. campestris oleifera DC. or B. colza Lam. and that its culture, first starting in 

 Belgium, is now extensively carried on in Holstein. De CandoUe ^ supposes the Swedish 

 turnip is a variety, analogous to the kohl-rabi among cabbages, but with the root swollen 

 instead of the stem. In its original wild condition, it is a flatfish, globular root, with a 

 very fine tail, a narrow neck and a hard, deep yellow flesh. Buckman,' by seeding rape 

 and common turnips in mixed rows, secured, through hybridization, a small percentage 

 of malformed swedes, which were greatly improved by careful cultivation. If Bentham 

 was correct in classing B. napus with B. campestris, the result of Buckman's experiment 

 does not carry the rutabaga outside of B. campestris for its origin. Don^ classifies the 

 rutabaga as B. campestris Linn. var. oleifera, sub. var. rutabaga. 



The turnip is of ancient culture. Columella,^ A. D. 42, says the napus and the rapa 

 are both grown for the use of man and beast, especially in France ; the former does not have 

 a swollen but a slender root, and the latter is the larger and greener. He also speaks of the 

 Mursian gongylis, which may be the round turnip, as being especially fine. The distinction 

 between the napus and the rapa was not always held, as Pliny ' uses the word napus 

 generically and says that there are five kinds, the Corinthian, Cleonaeum, Liothasium, 

 Boeoticum and the Green. The Corinthian, the largest, with an almost bare root, grows 

 on the surface and not, as do the rest, vmder the soil. The Liothasiimi, also called Thracium, 

 is the hardest. The Boeoticum is sweet, of a notable roundness and not very long as 

 is the Cleonaeum. At Rome, the Amitemian is in most esteem, next the Nursian, and 

 third our own kind (the green?). In another place, under rapa, he mentions the broad- 

 bottom (flat?), the globular, and as the most esteemed, those of Nursia. The napus of 

 Amiternum, of a nature quite similar to the rapa, succeeds best in a cool place. He mentions 

 that the rapa sometimes attains a weight of forty poimds. This weight has, however, 



Unger, F. U. S. Pat. Off. Rpt. 327. 1859. 



' De CandoUe, A. P. Trans. Hort. Soc. Land. $-.25. 1824. 

 ' Buckman, J. Treas. Bot. 1:165. 1870. 

 Don, G. Hist. Dichl. Pis. 1:241. 1831. 

 'Columella lib. 2, c. 10, etc.; 10, c. 421. 



Pliny lib. 19, c. 25; lib. 18, c. 34, 35. 



