CABBAGE

23rd December 2023

SIR HUGH: Pauca verba, Sir John, good worts?

FALSTAFF: Good worts? Good cabbage!

CABBAGE (Brassica oleraca)

The Cabbage makes an appearance as a play on words in the Merry Wives of Windsor. Cabbages and related vegetables were also known as Cole Worts. Cabbages were well known in Shakespeare’s world. John Gerard lists the many varieties of Cabbages and Cole Worts and their uses in food and medicine. He is slightly scathing about its quality as a food: “it yeeldeth to the body smal nourishment, and doth not ingender good, but a gross and melancholicke bloud.” However he does report that “the raw Colewort being eaten before meate, doth preserve a man from drunkenesse: the reason is yeelded, for that there is a naturall enmitie between it and the vine”.

Cabbages are part of a remarkable species, Brassica oleracea. The same species gives us Cabbage, Kale, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Brussel Sprouts and Kohlrabi. Kew Gardens celebrated this remarkable diversity of domestication of this species which is native to Britain, Atlantic France and Spain but is now grown all over the world.

The Lundy Cabbage is a wild form of Brassica which only grows on the Island of Lundy and has its own associated endemic insects.

More Information

John Gerard, 1597 (first edition), The Great Herballe, or General Historie of Plantes (1636 edition accessed via Archive.org)

Kew: Taming the Savage Cabbage

Kew Plants of the World Online: Brassica oleracea

Lundy Field Society: Lundy Cabbage