Cabbage (Brassica oleracea; see BRASSICA), a plant in general cultivation for culinary purposes, and for feeding cattle. The common cabbage is said to have been introduced into England by the Romans, but to have been little known in Scotland until brought by Cromwell's soldiers. The principal varieties are known to have existed at least as far back as the 16th century, but minor varieties are being constantly produced by selection and intercrossing. The varieties (see BRASSICA) differ greatly from each other, and the ancestral wild cabbages yet admit of simple interpretation as terms of a continuous series of simple variations. The parent is of highly vegetative character, as its habitat and habit alike show; and placed in more favourable conditions its growth becomes luxuriant. This vegetative exuberance may be expressed in the simplest way by a growth of the parenchyma of the leaf, which is thus thrown into wavy folds, which are specially developed in the common kale; or the vegetative surplus may be reserved for flowering in various ways. Manufactured in the leaf, this surplus cannot pass away save in the first place through the leaf-stalk; and in one variety, the Portugal or Tronchxuda Cabbage, it remains in the midribs, which consequently become parenchymatous and succulent. More normally, however, it is carried back into the stem, and this may accordingly become swollen and turnip-like, in which case we have the Kohl-Rabi, of which an extreme subterranean and almost turnip-like variety has also arisen, or may be, as in the Jersey Cabbage, largely applied to the purpose of the growth of the stem, which may reach a height of 8 to 10 feet, and furnish not only walking-sticks but even spars for small thatched roofs, &c. The vegetative overplus may however also be applied to the formation of buds, which accordingly develop with peculiar exuberance, giving us Brussels Sprouts, or may be withheld from the lateral buds to be lavished upon the apical one alone, which thus forms the enormous 'head' of the cabbage. From excessive nutrition the flowering of this terminal bud is delayed until its own large and solid non-vegetative bulk, as well as the checking of the vegetation of the external green leaves by the winter, have given the reproductive functions an opportunity of preponderance. The most evolved and final variety is the Cauliflower, in which the vegetative surplus becomes poured into the flowering head, of which the flowering is more or less checked; the inflorescence becoming a dense corymb instead of an open panicle, and the majority of the flowers aborting, so as to become incapable of producing seed. Let a specially vegetative cabbage repeat the excessive development of its leaf parenchyma, and we have the wrinkled and blistered Savoy, of which the hardy constitution, but comparative coarseness, become also more intelligible; again a specially vegetative cauliflower gives us an easily grown and hardy winter variety, Broccoli, from which, and not from the ordinary cauliflower, a sprouting variety arises in turn.
The whole series of variations from wild cabbage to cauliflower, from leaf to buds in the sprout, lateral to terminal bud in the cabbage, and flower in the cauliflower, are thus seen to be hypertrophied arrestments of a single process, that subordination of vegetative gains to reproductive life which is the normal fact of individual history in the organic world, as well as the essential factor of floral evolution. See BOTANY.
Cultivation.—The cabbage is biennial, consequently the main crop must be sown the autumn previous to that in which it is to be reaped. Field cabbages and the drumhead varieties that are used in gardens, being late in character, may be sown in July, or from the third week of that month to the second week of August. But the smaller and early sorts used in gardens should not be sown before the first week of August, nor later than the second week of that month. If the plants are reared earlier, they are apt to run to seed the following spring; and if, on the other hand, they are reared later, they will not acquire strength enough to withstand the cold of winter before it comes upon them. For successive crops to be used in the shape of young summer cabbages, one or two sowings may be made from the beginning of March to the beginning of April. Autumn-sown plants may be planted out in rows permanently as soon as they are strong enough. Additional plantations from the same sowing may be made in spring, to be followed by others, made at intervals up till July, from spring-sown plants. Thus a close succession of usable cabbage may be obtained the year round. In the northern parts of the United States, cabbages for the early summer market are sown about September, kept under glass or frames during winter, and planted out in spring. For later markets, the seed is sown in beds as early as possible in spring (about March), and transplanted later. Cabbages are sometimes preserved for winter by inverting them and burying them in the ground.
Cabbage-coleworts may be obtained from any good early variety of cabbage. They are simply cabbages which are not permitted to form hearts, but are used while the leaves are yet green and the hearts more or less open. Three sowings should be made for the rearing of these, the first about the middle of June, the second about the same time in July, and the third about the last week of the latter month, or the first week of August. These sowings will provide crops of green cabbages from October till March or April, if the winter is not destructive, after which they begin to run to seed.