The Not-So-Common Cabbage

By Audrey Stallsmith

“The time has come, the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships and sealing-wax—
Of cabbages—and kings.

"The Walrus and the Carpenter" by Lewis Carroll

Cabbage has gotten a bad rap, with Frank Baum calling it “cold and flabby” in one of his Oz books.  Granted, the vegetable often was fed to prisoners in labor camps.  And cheap boarding houses supposedly reeked of boiled cabbage.  But is that any reason to identify it with stupidity or the prosaically practical as opposed to the romance of, say, roses?

D. H. Lawrence talked about “the courage of rosiness in a cabbage world” and Thoreau asserted that “Nature has a place for the wild clematis as well as for the cabbage.”  (At least, he didn’t say wild rose!)  I’ve actually been guilty of this sort of comparison myself, because I recall grumbling once that it was always the flats of primrose seedlings that got upset and not those of something more easily raised—such as cabbages.

Can’t we allow the cabbage a little romance too?  After all, the whole idea of heads that grow on plants is quite exotic, if not more than a bit surreal!  And one of the most lush classes of roses, the centifolias, derive their common name—cabbage roses—from those supposedly prosaic pates.

Also, flowering brassicas are among the prettiest blooms of fall and—due to the frost resistance of their leathery “petals”—can outlast most others.  I clearly recall how delighted I was to find flowering cabbages and kales marked down at a local store in late autumn one year—and how triumphantly I hauled them home to brighten a garden that was otherwise succumbing to the cold.

And I happen to like boiled cabbage, though I admit it isn’t very good for my digestion!  It is, however, good for me, being loaded with Vitamins C and K and boron, as well as with fiber.  In fact, sauerkraut (pickled and fermented cabbage) once helped prevent scurvy among sailors.  Cabbage has a certain drawing quality too, which made it a popular compress for abscesses. 

The Romans even believed you could increase your immunity to disease by bathing in the urine of cabbage eaters.  Of course, they also held that consumption of the vegetable would help prevent intoxication, probably due to its supposed animosity toward the grape vine.  I wouldn’t take any of that seriously, but we do know now that the eating of brassicas will provide us with antioxidants and phytonutrients which may help prevent cancer.

In Europe, cabbage (Brassica oleracea var. capitata) probably was first grown by the Celts, which may explain its association with St. Patrick’s Day.  It actually is a biennial, which doesn’t bloom until its second year.   

Originating in a wild cabbage called colewort, it took its common name from the French caboche (“head”).  Capitata also means "having a head.”  Considering what we know about the vegetable's benefits now, perhaps we could designate somebody who is a “cabbagehead” as being foreseeing rather than a fool! 

 

Brassica oleracea var. capitata image is by Giorgio Bonelli, from Hortus Romanus Juxta Systema Tournefortianum, Volume 4, courtesy of plantillustrations.org.