On the Kohl- Rah i. 
499 
history of llie plant ; a description of the different varieties ; the 
best known method of cultivation and management ; its average 
produce ; the most profitable mode of consuming it ; the insects 
and diseases which attack it ; concluding with an epitome of the 
existing evidence as to its properties and value as a feeding 
plant, and as a substitute for swedes and common turnips. 
History. 
Some confusion seems to have existed among the older writers 
as to this plant, it being not very clear whether, in speaking of 
the Rapo-caulis and Cmdo-rapum, the Kohl-Rabi or the Swedish 
turnip is meant. Parkinson, in his ' Paradisus ' (1629), men- 
tions the Rapo-caulis ; but old Gerarde, in 1597, describing the 
various species of cabbage, clearly indicates the Kohl-Rabi. 
He says : — 
" Of Rape-Cole the first kinde hath one single long root, garnished with 
many threddy strings, from which riseth up a great thicke stalke, bigger than 
a great cucumber or great tumep : at the top whereof shooteth forth great 
broad leaves, like unto those of cabbage-cole. The floures grow at the top on 
slender stalkes, compact of foure small yellow floures ; which being past, 
the seed foUoweth inclosed in little long cods, like the seed of mustard 
They grow in Italy, Spaine, and some places of Gennanie, from whence I 
have received seedes for my garden, as also from an honest and curious friend 
of mine, called master Goodman, at the Minories, neere London They 
floure and flourish when the other coleworts doe, whereof no doubt they are 
kinds, and must be carefully set and sowne, as musk melons and cucumbers 
are. . . . They are called in Latine C'aulo-rapum and Bajpo-caidis, bearing for 
their stalkes, as it were, rapes and turneps, participating of two plants, the 
coleworte and the tumep, from whereof they took their names There 
is nothing set downe of the faculties of these plants, but are accounted for 
daintie meate, contending with the cabbage-cole in goodnesse and pleasant 
taste." 
In the ' Catalogue of the Plants in the Physic Garden at 
Edinburgh,'* published in 1683, we find the following entry : — 
" Brassica gongylodes, B. P. Hist. Oxon. ; B. caulo-rapa, /, B. ; 
Caulo-rapum rotundum, Ger. ; Rapo-caulis, Bark. Barad. ; Cole- 
rape, Ann." From this we learn that the Kohl-Rabi was an 
inmate of the Edinburgh old Physic Garden nearly two hundred 
years ago. In 1734, or just one hundred and twenty-five years 
since, the Kohl-Rabi was first brought into notice in field culture 
by Mr. Wynne Baker, the Secretary of the Dublin Agricultural 
Society ; and, as will by and by be noticed, our Irish friends 
seem never to have lost sight of it, and are at the present day 
offering premiums for its cultivation. In 1774, the seed of the 
purple " Kohl-Rabi, or Red Turnip Cabbage," was advertised for 
* " By Mr. James Sutherland, Intendant of the said Garden ; and sold by Mr. 
Henry Ferguson, seed-merchant, at the head of Blackfriars Wymie." 
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