Lepidium sativum L., Garden Cress

Account Summary

Growth form and preferred habitats

This annual is the original 'cress' of 'mustard and cress' seedlings, which was grown in gardens for winter salad for at least a thousand years. Its seed germination and growth on dampened blotting paper by windowsills was watched with interest by many generations of primary school children.

The salad form of the species has been selected for its milder, peppery taste, which is sharp but pleasant when eaten raw and at the young cotyledon stage (Edlin 1951). In his brief note on the subject in BSBI News, Rich (1988) helpfully provided an illustrated key to the seedlings of the plants involved, but the curious and unusual three-lobed seed leaves or cotyledons of L. sativum really are absolutely unmistakable. Rich's excellent Crucifers of Great Britain and Ireland details the distinguishing characters of the more adult plant (Rich 1991, p. 230).

L. sativum is frequently used as a plant bioassay in many kinds of laboratory and field experimental situations and, for instance, a 'Google Scholar' internet search for "Lepidium sativum plant bioassays" on 11 April 2021 produced 3,930 literature 'hits'.

Fermanagh occurrence

L. sativum has been found only once in Fermanagh. As listed above, it was growing as a weed and producing seed in an Enniskillen greenhouse, rather than in a truly wild or semi-wild situation. Nowadays it has been almost completely replaced by Brassica napus (Rape) both in the school curriculum and in salads purchased in shops and in eating establishments (Rich 1988).

British and Irish occurrence

Elsewhere in the wild in B & I, L. sativum now occurs only rather rarely as a casual, non-persistent individual, or in small populations, chiefly as a ruderal on roadsides, or on disturbed or waste ground, in rubbish tips and occasionally in newly re-seeded grassland (Reynolds 2002). The seed sources nowadays appear to be as bird feed and grass seed mixture contaminants, as well as from culinary and horticultural waste. In England, north of the Midlands, the New Atlas map shows L. sativum is very thinly and widely scattered and there are very few recent records of it at all from Scotland, Wales and Ireland (Rich 1991; D.A. Pearman, in: Preston et al. 2002).

Centre of origin

The species is considered to originate somewhere in W Asia and/or N Africa (Rich 1991), possibly in Iran (Edlin 1951), or Egypt (Jalas et al. 1996, p. 209), although being one of the more ancient salad plants it is so widely introduced, cultivated and naturalised worldwide that nobody can be certain where it comes from, so that the latter reference decided not to map it.

Names

The English common name 'Cress' is descended from Old English 'caerse', 'cerse' and 'cresse' and has equivalents in all other Germanic languages. These words all derive from an Indo-European base meaning 'to nibble' or 'to eat' (Grigson 1974). The name 'Cress' is often loosely applied to many different members of the Cabbage Family, but according to Prior (1879), when used absolutely, it properly refers only to the genus Lepidium.

Threats

None.

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