826 History of Garden Vegetables, 
HISTORY OF GARDEN VEGETABLES. 
BY E. LEWIS STURTEVANT, A.M., M.D." 
(Continued from page 712.) 
CHINESE CABBAGE. Brassica chinensis. 
UT little appears to be recorded concerning the varieties d 
this cabbage, of which the Pak choi and the Pe-tsai on | 
have reached European culture. It has, however, been loig 
under cultivation in China, as it can be identified in Chine 
works on agriculture of the fifth, sixteenth, seventeenth, ah 
eighteenth centuries? Loureiro? (1790) says also cultivated t 
Cochin China; and varieties are named with white and yello 
flowers. The Pak choi has more resemblance to a chard that 
; ` toa cabbage, having oblong or oval, dark, shining-green lear 
upon long, very white, and swollen stalks. The Peta, e 
ever, rather resembles a Cos lettuce, forming an elongated heat, 
rather full and compact, and the leaves a little wrinkled al 
undulate on the borders+ Both varieties have, however, & 00% 
mon aspect, and are annuals. 7 
Considering that the round-headed cabbage is the only sot 
figured by the herbalists, and that the pointed-headed early p 
bages appeared only at a comparatively recent date, and ¢ | 
resemblances between the Ze-żsai and the long-headed aa 
it is not an impossible suggestion that these cabbage- aie 
peared as the effect of cross-fertilization with the ee 
certain that occasional rare sports or variables from ' | 
our early long-headed cabbages show the heavy veining | p 
limb of the leaf extending down thè stalk, and sugeet "i 
the Chinese type. At present, however, our views P g 
origin of our various types of cabbage must be consi — 
largely speculative.’ 2 
* Director of the New York Agricultural Experiment ser ; 
* Bretschneider, Bot. Sin., 59, 78, 83, 85. ; 
3 Loureiro, Fl, Cochinch., 397. 
* Vilmorin, The Veg. Gard., 1885, 147. 
