Eruca vesicaria

Arugula (American English) /əˈruːɡulə/ or rocket (British English) (Eruca vesicaria; syns. Eruca sativa Mill., E. vesicaria subsp. sativa (Miller) Thell., Brassica eruca L.) is an edible annual plant in the family Brassicaceae used as a leaf vegetable for its fresh, tart, bitter, and peppery flavor. Other common names include garden rocket, (British, Australian, South African, Irish and New Zealand English), and eruca. Some additional names are 'rocket salad', 'rucola', 'rucoli', 'rugula', 'colewort', and 'roquette'. Eruca sativa, which is widely popular as a salad vegetable, is a species of Eruca native to the Mediterranean region, from Morocco and Portugal in the west to Syria, Lebanon, and Turkey in the east. It is an annual plant growing to 20–100 cm tall. The leaves are deeply pinnately lobed with four to ten small lateral lobes and a large terminal lobe. The flowers are 2–4 cm diameter, arranged in a corymb, with the typical Brassicaceae flower structure; the petals are creamy white with purple veins, and the stamens yellow; the sepals are persistent after the flower opens. The fruit is a siliqua (pod) 12–25 mm long with an apical beak, and containing several seeds. Eruca vesicaria grows 20–100 centimetres (8–39 in) in height. The pinnate leaves have four to ten small, deep, lateral lobes and a large terminal lobe. The flowers are 2–4 cm (0.8–1.6 in) in diameter, arranged in a corymb in typical Brassicaceae fashion, with creamy white petals veined in purple, and having yellow stamens; the sepals are shed soon after the flower opens. The fruit is a siliqua (pod) 12–35 millimetres (0.5–1.4 in) long with an apical beak, and containing several seeds (which are edible). The species has a chromosome number of 2n = 22. The Latin adjective sativa in the plant's binomial name is derived from satum, the supine of the verb sero, meaning 'to sow', indicating that the seeds of the plant were sown in gardens. Eruca sativa differs from E. vesicaria in having early deciduous sepals. Some botanists consider it a subspecies of Eruca vesicaria: E. vesicaria subsp. sativa. Still others do not differentiate between the two. The English common name rocket derives from the French roquette, a diminutive of the Latin word eruca, which once designated a particular plant in the family Brassicaceae (probably a type of cabbage). Arugula (/əˈruːɡələ/), the common name now widespread in the United States and Canada, entered American English from a non-standard dialect of Italian. The standard Italian word is rucola, a diminutive of the Latin 'eruca'. The Oxford English Dictionary dates the first appearance of 'arugula' in American English to a 1960 article in The New York Times by food editor and prolific cookbook writer Craig Claiborne. It is sometimes conflated with Diplotaxis tenuifolia, known as 'perennial wall rocket', another plant of the family Brassicaceae that is used in the same manner. Eruca vesicaria typically grows on dry, disturbed ground and is also used as a food by the larvae of some moth species, including the garden carpet moth. Eruca vesicaria roots are also susceptible to nematode infestation. A pungent, leafy green vegetable resembling a longer-leaved and open lettuce, Eruca vesicaria is rich in vitamin C and potassium. In addition to the leaves, the flowers, young seed pods and mature seeds are all edible.