Bastard cabbage
Rapistrum rugosum
Family · Brassicaceae · Irritating
The yellow crucifer covering fallow land and verges in spring, recognised by its fruit: a short two-storey pod with a wrinkled ball on top and a slender piece below.
Fields and pasture · Roadsides and waste ground · Town and roadside
Also known asturnipweed, annual bastard cabbage
How to tell it
Yellow four-petalled flowers in a cross, like all crucifers. The fruit is the signature and settles identification: it has two segments, the lower narrow and cylindrical, the upper a round wrinkled grooved ball with a beak on top. Lower leaves in a rosette, cut, rough.
What it is confused with
Wild radish
Raphanus raphanistrum
The fruit always decides in this family. Wild radish has a long pod constricted between the seeds, like a necklace; bastard cabbage has a short pod with a wrinkled ball on top. Both were eaten cooked.
What it is for
The young leaves were eaten cooked like the other wild mustards, pungent and bitter. Traditional use. It is an aggressive invader in Texas, and in Spain it takes over whole fallow fields; do not gather it on road verges.
Traditionally used as food. This is not permission to eat it.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
Community
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