WILD ROCKET

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 flavour.

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.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

WALLFLOWER

Erysimum (wallflower) is a genus of flowering plants in the botanical family Brassicaceae, that includes about 180 species, both popular garden plants and many wild forms. The genus Cheiranthus is sometimes included here in whole or in part. Erysimum has recently been ascribed to a monogeneric cruciferous tribe, Erysimeae. This tribe is characterized by sessile, stellate and/or malpighiaceous  trichomes, yellow to orange flowers and multiseeded siliques.

Most wallflower garden cultivars (e.g. Erysimum 'Chelsea Jacket') are derived from E. cheiri (often placed in Cheiranthus), from southern Europe. They are often attacked by fungal and bacterial disease, so they are best grown as biennials and discarded after flowering. They are also susceptible to clubroot, a disease of Brassicaceae.

Growth is best in dry soils with very good drainage, and they are often grown successfully in loose wall mortar, hence the vernacular name. There is a wide range of flower colour in the warm spectrum, including white, yellow, orange, red, pink, maroon, purple and brown. The flowers, appearing in spring, usually have a strong fragrance. Wallflowers are often associated in spring bedding schemes with tulips and forget-me-nots. The cultivar 'Bowles's Mauve' has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

IBERIS

Iberis sempervirens (evergreen candytuft, perennial candytuft) is a species of flowering plant in the family Brassicaceae, native to southern Europe. It is a spreading subshrub growing to 30 cm high by 40 cm broad. As an ornamental plant it is a spring-blooming favourite, often seen cascading over rocks and walls, or used as groundcover. The glossy, evergreen foliage forms a billowing mound, with many fragrant, pure white flowers for several weeks during spring and early summer.

When grown in a garden it may require light pruning right after blooming, but otherwise plants can be left alone in fall and early spring. It is drought-tolerant once established. It prefers a well-drained site, so heavy clay soils that stay wet in winter should be avoided. It is not easily divided. Iberis is so named because many members of the genus come from the Iberian Peninsula. Sempervirens means "always green", referring to the evergreen foliage. This plant and the cultivar 'Snowflake' have gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

CANDYTUFT

Iberis sempervirens (evergreen candytuft, perennial candytuft) is a species of flowering plant in the family Brassicaceae, native to southern Europe. It is a spreading subshrub growing to 30 cm high by 40 cm broad. As an ornamental plant it is a spring-blooming favourite, often seen cascading over rocks and walls, or used as groundcover.

The glossy, evergreen foliage forms a billowing mound, with many fragrant, pure white flowers for several weeks during spring and early summer. When grown in a garden it may require light pruning right after blooming, but otherwise plants can be left alone in autumn and early spring.

It is drought-tolerant once established. It prefers a well-drained site, so heavy clay soils that stay wet in winter should be avoided. It is not easily divided. Iberis is so named because many members of the genus come from the Iberian Peninsula. Sempervirens means "always green", referring to the evergreen foliage. This plant and the cultivar 'Snowflake' have gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

COUNTRYSIDE

A day trip to Gippsland and the lush springtime countryside is a wonderful sight. In the foreground, wild radish (Raphanus raphanistrum - white charlock or jointed charlock - is a flowering plant in the family Brassicaceae). To the right, the flowering shrub is hawthorn (Crataegus - May-tree - a large genus of shrubs and trees in the family Rosaceae, native to temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere in Europe, Asia and North America).

Both of these are introduced species and classified as environmental weeds in many parts of Australia. However, they are a very pretty seasonal sight reminiscent of European meadows and hedgerows.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

MELBOURNE WEEDS 6 - JOINTED CHARLOCK

Raphanus raphanistrum, the wild radish or jointed charlock, is a flowering plant in the family Brassicaceae. It is sometimes claimed to be the ancestor of the edible radish, Raphanus sativus. Native to Asia (or, according to some authorities, the Mediterranean), it has been introduced into most parts of the world, and is regarded as a damagingly invasive species in many areas, for example Australia. It spreads rapidly, and is often found growing on roadsides or in other places where the ground has been disturbed.

In southeastern USA, the pale yellow form is common, sometimes entirely taking over fields in wintertime. It is often erroneously identified as mustard. It is a significant source of pollen and nectar for a variety of pollinators, especially honey bees during the very early spring starting buildup. Female Andrena agilissima, mining bees, frequent this plant to obtain pollen and nectar. 

Wild radish grows as an annual or biennial plant, with attractive four-petalled flowers 30–40 mm across and varying in colour, usually from white to purple but sometimes light orange to yellow, often with colour shading within a single petal. It is frost hardy, and even hard freezes only temporarily interrupt bloom. It blooms in early spring to late summer with flowers very similar to those of the searocket, which is found in some of the same regions and is easily distinguished from it by having thinner, non-succulent stems and leaves. It has a single taproot which is similar to that of the cultivated radish but less enlarged.

The genome of wild radish is estimated to be ~515 Mb. Approximately 49% of the genome (254 Mb) has been sequenced. researchers found evidence of a past whole-genome triplication in wild radish followed by widespread gene loss, resulting in ~38,000 genes in the genome of the extant species.

While this species is mostly a weed of agricultural areas and habitation, Raphanus raphanistrum is also troublesome in natural vegetation in some areas. It is seen as an environmental weed in Victoria and Western Australia and during a recent survey was listed as a priority environmental weed in two Natural Resource Management regions. In Victoria, wild radish is listed as a major environmental weed in Kinglake National Park. It is also present in other conservation areas in this state (e.g. Organ Pipes National Park) and appears on environmental weed lists for Knox City, Boroondara City and the Colac-Otway Shire.

This species is used as a salad vegetable in Greece, Turkey and in Southern Italy. It is also blanched with other wild mustard greens and used as a cooked vegetable. It contains many vitamins, minerals, has antioxidant and iron chelating properties.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme,
and also part of the Weekend Green meme.

MELBOURNE WEEDS 5 - CANOLA

Rapeseed (Brassica napus), also known as rape, oilseed rape, rapa, rappi, rapaseed (and, in the case of one particular group of cultivars, canola), is a bright-yellow flowering member of the family Brassicaceae (mustard or cabbage family), cultivated mainly for its oil-rich seed. It is the third-largest source of vegetable oil in the world.

It is also consumed in China (油菜: Mandarin Pinyin yóucài; Cantonese:jau⁴coi³) and Southern Africa as a vegetable. The name derives from the Latin for turnip, rāpa or rāpum, and is first recorded in English at the end of the 14th century. Older writers usually distinguished the turnip and rape by the adjectives 'round' and 'long' (-'rooted'), respectively. Rutabagas, Brassica napobrassica, are sometimes considered a variety of B. napus. Some botanists also include the closely related B. rapa within B. napus.

Canola was developed through conventional plant breeding from rapeseed, an oilseed plant already used in ancient civilisation as a fuel. The change in name serves to distinguish it from natural rapeseed oil, which has much higher erucic acid content. In the 1970s, the Rapeseed Association of Canada chose the name "canola" to represent "Can" for Canada, and "ola" for oil. One dictionary purports that it stands for Can(ada) + o(il) + l(ow) + a(cid).

Canola oil is made at a processing facility by slightly heating and then crushing the seed.[Almost all commercial canola oil is then extracted using hexane solvent which is recovered at the end of processing. Finally, the canola oil is refined using water precipitation and organic acid to remove gums and free fatty acids, filtering to remove colour, and deodorising using steam distillation.

Throughout Melbourne, canola plants can be found as escapers from cultivation. These are considered weeds, although the leaves, seeds, and stems of this mustard variety are edible. The plant appears in some form in African, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Italian, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and African-American (soul food) cuisines. In Greece the young flower-bud shoots are collected, boiled and served with an oil and lemon juice dressing as salad greens (one of the greens collectively known as "horta").

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme,
and also part of the Food Friday meme.