118 



Salad Crops 



America than abroad. Figs. 50 to 52 show the garden 

 cress. 



Garden cress is Lepidium sativum, Linn. Sp. PI. 644. Crucl- 

 Jerce. Being a lepidium, it is therefore closely related to the 

 wild peppergrass of j ards and waste places. Plant annual, 

 making a tuft or rosette of leaves used in salad, soon sending 

 up a smooth slightly glaucous erect branching stem 1 to 2 ft. 

 high : radical and lower stem leaves oval or oblong in outline, 

 long-petioled, twice pinnatifid into narrow lobed divisions, some- 

 times crisped or curled ; upper leaves once pinnate or ternate, 

 the uppermost often simple, long-linear and entire: flowers 

 small, white, in terminal racemes : pod a flattened broadly oval 

 stalked silicle notched at the top, about 6 mm, long, with 

 one seed hanging from the top in each of the 2 cells: seed, 

 rather large (2 mm. or about iV in. long), smooth, brown, with 

 a straightish front and curved back, weighing about 2 mg. and 

 holding its vitality about 5 years. — Native in Europe, and 

 sometimes escaped in this country. 



The winter and spring cress, of the cruciferous genus Bar- 

 barea, is rarely grown. Upland cress grown by the writer 

 many years ago, from American commercial seed, was Bar- 

 barea ; recently he has planted seed under this name, and it 

 is Lepidium sativum. The spring cress of cultivation is prob- 

 ably mostly Barharca verna, Aschers. {B. prcBCOX, R. Br.). It 

 is usually biennial, the young plants becoming established from 

 seeds dropped in summer, and sending up the flower-stalks 

 early the following spring. In cultivation, it is treated as 

 an annual or as a winter perennial. The seeds may be sown 

 late in the season and the young plants are ready for use the 

 next spring ; or seeds may be sown in earliest spring. The 

 plant is perfectly hardy, 



Watei'-cj'ess 



Water-cress is a prostrate perennial, rooting at the 

 joints, with small roundish leaves, thriving in very moist 

 places and in running water. ■ It is readily propagated by 



