Garden Rocket

Description

Arugula (American English) or rocket (Commonwealth 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 (in Britain, Australia, South Africa, Ireland, and New Zealand) and eruca 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, Israel, Egypt and Turkey in the east. 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). Arugula, the common name now widespread in the United States and Canada, entered American English from a nonstandard 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. Grown as an edible and popular herb in Italy since Roman times, it was mentioned by various ancient Roman classical authors as an aphrodisiac, most famously in a poem long ascribed to the famous 1st century Roman poet Virgil, Moretum, which contains the line: "et Venerem revocans eruca morantem" ("and the rocket, which revives drowsy Venus"),and in the Ars Amatoria of Ovid. Some writers assert that for this reason during the Middle Ages it was forbidden to grow rockets in monasteries. It was listed, however, in a decree by Charlemagne of 802 as one of the pot herbs suitable for growing in gardens.Gillian Riley, author of the Oxford Companion to Italian Food, states that because of its reputation as a sexual stimulant, it was "prudently mixed with lettuce, which was the opposite" (i.e., calming or even soporific). Riley continues that "nowadays rocket is enjoyed innocently in mixed salads, to which it adds a pleasing pungency", though Norman Douglas insisted that “Salad rocket is certainly a stimulant”.