by Jason Hernandez

Created on: March 01, 2008

Cole crops are some of the most varied of garden crops. From just a few original species, a wide variety of separate types have been developed, each one serving a different purpose. Every part, from the root to the seed, has been selected in one or another type of cole crop.

All cole crops are based on the genus Brassica, the representative or "type" genus of the mustard family of plants. The basic Brassica is an annual or biennial weed, with a single, long taproot, large basal leaves, and a branching flower stalk. The flowers are yellow, with four distinct petals, and very attractive to all nectar-feeding bees and hover flies. This four-petaled or "cross-shaped" flower is the reason these plants have sometimes been called crucifers. The seeds are borne in a capsule, cylindrical in shape, generally pinched narrow between each seed. The seeds themselves are quite small, round or slightly ovoid, generally yellowish or orangish-brown.

There are three basic species of Brassica making up the cole crops: Brassica oleracea, the colewort; Brassica campestris, the field mustard; and Brassica nigra, black mustard. There is also a hybrid species, Brassica napus, resulting from a cross between colewort and field mustard. A few other species exist, but are not part of the cole crops. One example is Brassica hirta, white mustard, occasionally grown for mustard seed, but not as commercially important for this purpose as black mustard. Another is Brassica kaber, charlock, a weed not grown as a crop. All are originally native to Eurasia, but have spread to North America and elsewhere as both weeds and crops.

Let us consider first the colewort, Brassica oleracea. "Wort" is an old word for plant, so colewort simply means cole-plant; it is the species which has produced the widest variety of important crops. In its most basic domesticated form, differing from the wild type only in having enlarged leaves, it is the collard ("collard" is just a simpified pronunciation of colewort), and, when the leaves are also curled in various ways, kale. Collards and kales are a complex of crops in themselves, encompassing the basic collard greens common in Southern cooking, to large, coarse kales used mainly for feeding livestock, to the wildly colored ornamental kales (as edible as any other kale), to the "tree kale" of the English Channel Islands, with tall, woody stems suitable for walking sticks. As a general rule, kales thrive in more northern, cooler climates, collards in warmer southern

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