Rocket or arugula (American 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[1] (in Britain, Australia, South Africa, Ireland and New Zealand),[2] and eruca.[2] It is also called “ruchetta”, “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, Egypt and Turkey in the east.[3][2]
Eruca vesicaria is an annual plant growing to 20 to 100 centimetres (8 to 40 inches) in height. The pinnate leaves are deeply lobed with four to ten small lateral lobes and a large terminal lobe. The flowers are 2 to 4 cm (3⁄4 to 1 1⁄2 in) in diameter, arranged in a corymb, with the typical Brassicaceae flower structure. The petals are creamy white with purple veins, and the stamens yellow. The fruit is a siliqua (pod) 12 to 25 mm (1⁄2 to 1 in) long with an apical beak, containing several seeds (which are edible). The species has a chromosome number of 2n = 22.[2][1][4]
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.[1] Some botanists consider it a subspecies of Eruca vesicaria: E. vesicaria subsp. sativa.[1] Still others do not differentiate between the two.[5]
The English common name rocket derives from the Italian word Ruchetta or rucola, a diminutive of the Latin word eruca, which once designated a particular plant in the family Brassicaceae (probably a type of cabbage).[6] 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. 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.[7]
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.
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