Fine cooking out in the cabbage patch

In the most recent issue of the fine cooking magazine Fine Cooking, the writers have gone out on a somewhat thin taxonomic limb.

The Brassicas article in Fine Cooking.  Photo by BotanicalAccuracy.com.

So, what do they write?

"Arugula and turnips bear little resemblance to one another on the plate, so you might be surprised to learn that they both belong to the cabbage family, otherwise known as Brassica."

Well, arugula and turnips are both member of the cabbage family, but that family is called Brassicaceae, the mustard or cabbage family. Even if turnips is placed in Brassica, arugula is not, and in fact, the two commonly cultivated species of arugula are in different genera.

The article continues:

"Other members include broccoli, Broccolini, broccoli raab, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, cabbage, collard greens, mizuna, tatsoi, kale, watercress, radish, and horseradish." 

Yes, these are all members of the mustard family Brassicaceae, but not all are species of the Brassica genus. Brassica is one of about 375 genera in the mustard family.  Some of the species listed are actually cultivars (domesticated varieties) of the same species of Brassica.  And what is going on with that capitalization on common names?  Lets capitalize every second word that starts with B?   

So how does this all work?  What is really the same genus and species of these delicious plants?  There are many cultivated plants in the Brassicaceae family (the mustard family). Brassica gave its name to the family Brassicaceae, like Rosa (roses) to Rosaceae (rose family), and Poa (bluegrass) to Poaceae (grasses). All plant families have scientific names that end with '-aceae', rather convenient when you try to tell them apart from other group names.

Giant cabbages (Brassica oleracea) at a market in Uzbekistan. Photo by Lena Struwe (Creative Commons).

There are many, many species and cultivars of Brassica (or brassicas, as they are sometimes called in English). The cultivated brassicas are ancient and a result of a lot of breeding, selection, and crossing of genotypes, so their taxonomy is a bit messy within Brassica itself. Sorting out the current common names, their scientific names, and classification of the brassicas has to wait for another blog post (which is in the works). But, the summary is:

The Brassica genus is a member of the family Brassicaceae. Many other edible mustard plants are placed in other genera of the Brassicaceae. 

Canola oil flowers - four or five petals? Ask Trader Joe...

Canola oil is made from the rape seed plant's (several Brassica species) oil rich seeds, a member of the mustard family, the Brassicaceae.  Members of this family can easily be identified by their very typical flowers.  They have 4 petals, often white, yellow, or pink, situated in a cross-wise fashion, which gave them the old family name Cruciferae.  Yes, that is the same word beginning as in crucifix, a cross.

Brassicaceae flowers also have 6 stamens, and a central pistil that will develop into a fruit when/if pollinated.  All mustard plants have the same types of flowers, be it broccoli, garlic mustard, cabbage, arugula, or kohlrabi.  But there is one place, where the rule doesn't hold up...

Canola Oil Spray at Trader Joe's.
(cc) BotanicalAccuracy.com

On the Trader Joe's Canola Oil Spray bottle, sold only at the Trader Joe's supermarket, they have nicely added some flowers from the canola oil plant to the label. Only the flowers look like this:

Close up of Canola Oil Spray cans at Trader Joe's.
(cc) BotanicalAccuracy.com

So, what do we have here?  One flower with four petals (good!), and one flower with five petals (oops!).  And inside each flower, there are three 'things'.   I assume these might be stamens or pistils, but neither makes sense based on the numbers or shapes. The flowers are also never arranged in this particular fashion, but that is a minor point.

So, who cares? Well, if you make a piece of art you certainly can and should have artistic freedom. But, if you illustrate a product, the illustration should provide some knowledge (or excitement) or identification value about the product. It should be the real thing and not introduce errors or misunderstandings into the public's knowledge of plants and the product source.

The number of petals on mustard flowers are strictly determined by that group's bauplan, just like the 4 legs of a dog is based on a strict bauplan among allmammals. You don't go around and see a 5-legged dogs, do you? (5-legged dogs do exist, but are mutants, and they are even rarer in art.)

Here is the real canola:

Flowering canola plant. 
(cc)  Melanie_B (Flying Snow) on Flickr.

So, in this case, the flowers on the label are used to illustrated the origin of a product, canola oil from the canola plant. There are no canola oil flowers with 5 petals. There are no canola oil flowers with 3 non-descript things in the center of the flowers.  If this drawing had been made with 4 petals it would have been equally pretty, and also accurate. So you start to wonder where things went wrong, with the illustrator, with the description to the illustrator, or to the designer of the label?

Burt's Bees: Canola oil plant

The beauty and skin product company Burt's Bees gets a lot of their botany fully correct in their online ingredient list, but manage to get one of the most common plant-derived oils listed with a mistake in its scientific name, like this:

"CANOLA OIL (BRASSICA CAMPETSTRIS)" (link)

Canola oil comes from two different plants in the genus Brassica, which is in the mustard family (Brassicaceae).  In this genus are all the common cabbage crops - broccoli, cauliflower, broccoli rabe, white and red cabbage, brussels sprouts, rape seed, kale, collards, turnip, kohlrabi, some of the mustards, and rutabaga.  Through artificial breeding over hundreds of years these plants have been bred into crop varieties for the harvest of their seeds, leaves, roots, flowers, and seeds, respectively.

The two species that canola oil can come from are Brassica napus and Brassica rapa, and B. rapa now usually includes plants previously called Brassica campestris (not campetstris, as listed on Burt's Bees website). Since each species includes many cultivars and crops with a variety of common names, the scientific names have to be used to define the species in taxonomy.

INCI lists Canola oil as being  "an oil derived from Brassica napus L., Brassicaceae, low in erucic acid".  [Note the lack of italicizing the scientific name of the plant.]

Brassica napus. Source: Köhlers Medizinal-Pflanzen, Wikimedia, Public domain.

Canola oil is derived from the seeds, which are black and tiny and situated inside a long capsule. 

The Brassica taxonomy is still a bit uncertain (and messy), but here is an updated list of the species in the genus. Listing canola oil as Brassica campestris is not a major mistake considering the messy taxonomy of these species, but misspelling campestris is definitely incorrect.