Watercress-art - 4/5/18
"Nasturtium and Watercress" by Mistress Agnes deLanvallei.
NOTE: See also the files: carrots-msg, beets-msg, fennel-msg, onions-msg, turnips-msg, leeks-msg, potatoes-msg, vegetables-msg, B-Brod-Beans-art.
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Nasturtium and Watercress
by Mistress Agnes deLanvallei
Nasturtium is the modern common name of Tropaeolum majus, a plant from the west coast of South America according to the Cambridge World History of Food (Kiple and Ornelas 2000). They give "Indian cress" as an alternate common name. "it has been used as food in Peru…for thousands of years".
Watercress is a native of Eurasia, known to the Romans. The scientific name Linneaus applied to it was Nasturtium officinale, which has been revised to Rorippa nasturtium-aquaticum).
"cress is a term applied to a wide range of garden vegetables, including Trophaeolum species, introduced from the New World in the late 16th century." (Mabey 1987, p. 12) The Latin word for cress appears to nasturtium. Europe has dozens of similar species from garden cress to watercress and many other field cresses, now in a variety of genera. Today, watercress (Rorippa formerly Nasturtium), bittercress (Cardamine) and garden cress (Lepidium) are all plants in the mustard family (Brassicaceae).
While there are cresses (nasturtium) in the Greek herbal of Dioscorides (Gunther 1934) but they are not specifically watercress. Macer wrote "Watercress is called nasturtium" While the original Macer was an Latin poem written about 1000 AD, the translation available to me is based on a middle English version dated to end of the 13th Century. (O'Hanlon 1984).
Gerard is illuminating on the subject: Gerard's Book 2 covers, in this order: wild radish (modernly Brassicaceae), horseradish (modernly Brassicaceae), Winter Cresses (modernly Brassicaceae), mustard (modernly Brassicaceae), rocket (modernly Brassicaceae), tarragon (modernly Asteraceae), garden cresses (modernly Brassicaceae), Indian cresses (Trophaeolum modernly ) Sciatica cresses (modernly Brassicaceae), bank cresses (modernly Brassicaceae), dock cresses (looks like Caryophyllaceae), water parsnip and watercress (water parsnip is Apiaceae, but the watercress is pretty clearly what we call watercress today, Rorippa nasturtium-aquatica) and wild watercress (Cardamine, modernly Brassicaceae). Gerard calls the common watercress Nasturtium aquatica.
Gerard calls Indian cress (now called Trophaeolum) Nasturtium Indicum. He reports it has recently come from the New World by way of Spain. He comments "some have deemed [Indian cress], a kinde of Convolvulus or Binde-weed; yet I am well contented that it retaines the former name, for that the smell and taste shew it to be a kind of cresses." (p. 252).
Thus, apparently nasturtium was the Latin for "cress", "cress" covered many sharp-tasting plants and the common name for what Linnaeus called Nasturtium officinale (i.e. the official -- real -- cress) became watercress and the plant, renamed to be not even in the same family as watercress, bitter cress and garden cress, Trophaeolum majus in the plant family Trophaeolaceae, retained the name nasturtium as its English common name.
Literature Cited
Gerard, John. The Herbal or General history of plants. Complete 1633 edition as revised and enlarged by Thomas Johnson. Dover Publications, New York 1975.
Gunther, Robert T, editor. 1934. The Greek herbal of Dioscorides. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. {written approximately 64 AD, "illustrated by a Byzantine A.D. 512. Englished by John Goodyer A.D. 1655"]
Kiple, Kenneth F, and Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas, editors. 2000. The Cambridge world history of food. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK.
Mabey, Richard, ed. 1987. "The gardener's labyrinth Thomas Hill." Oxford University Press, Oxford UK. (reproduction of the first popular gardening manual, 1577)
O'Hanlon, David P. 1981. Macer's Virtue of Herbs. Hemkunt Press, Delhi.
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Copyright 2005 by Holly Howarth. <sablegreyhound at hotmail.com>. Permission is granted for republication in SCA-related publications, provided the author is credited. Addresses change, but a reasonable attempt should be made to ensure that the author is notified of the publication and if possible receives a copy.
If this article is reprinted in a publication, please place a notice in the publication that you found this article in the Florilegium. I would also appreciate an email to myself, so that I can track which articles are being reprinted. Thanks. -Stefan.
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