Question

Which plant is described by these clues? Its species epithet is a Latin adjective meaning of the vegetable garden, the word a Roman writer reached for to mean anything raised to be boiled and eaten. Every small flower opens four separate {petals} set crosswise above six {stamens}, four of them long and two conspicuously short. Its dry pods split from the base upward and shed both walls, leaving a slender standing rim with a papery {septum} still stretched inside it and the seeds ranged along both edges. The wild form of this species clings to chalk and limestone sea cliffs on the western and southern coasts of Europe, where salt spray and thin alkaline ground hold competitors back. Tear a leaf and a sharp sulphurous heat rises off it within seconds, because {glucosinolates} sit inert in the tissue until damage lets an enzyme reach them. Its genus name is nothing more than the everyday Latin noun classical writers used for the leafy pot-vegetable of the farm garden. Given a second season it refuses to finish: the stem base thickens, turns woody and grey, and carries conspicuous shield-shaped scars where old leaves have dropped away. The blades are thick, fleshy and entirely hairless beneath a blue-grey waxy bloom, running 10 to 14 inches (25 to 35 cm) long and 8 to 10 inches (20 to 25 cm) across on this plant. One familiar vegetable grown for a swollen terminal bud, one for a swollen stem, one for a crowded mass of unopened flower buds and one for the buds in every leaf axil all belong to this very same species. This form never closes a head at all: the leaves stay open around one thick upright stem 2 to 3 feet (60 to 90 cm) tall and are picked from the bottom upward so the growing tip keeps working for months. Hard frost improves it rather than ruining it, cold converting stored starch in the leaves to sugar, and it stays standing and croppable down to about 15 degrees F (-9 degrees C). In the American South its leaves are simmered slowly with smoked pork and served with the cooking liquor poured back over them, and a pre-1880 heirloom strain named for one Southern state is still grown for exactly that.

Accepted Answer

Brassica oleracea 'Georgia Southern'

Name That Plant #087