Scientific Name
Other Names
Life Form
Synonyms
Family
Food - Consumed primarily as vegetable.
Greece, Italy, Sicilia, Yugoslavia
Fields, roadsides, waste areas.
Pulls pests away from peppers, squash and other crops. One of the first vegetables to be successfully cultivated in outer space.
Herbs annual or biennial, 10-130 cm tall.
Stems often simple from base.
Basal leaves with petioles 1-30 cm; leaf blade oblong, obovate, oblanceolate, or spatulate in outline, 2-60 × 1-20 cm, lyrate or pinnatisect, sometimes undivided, margin dentate, apex obtuse or acute; lateral lobes 1-12 on each side of midvein, sometimes absent, oblong or ovate, to 10 × 5 cm. Uppermost cauline leaves subsessile, often undivided, dentate.
Flowers: sepals 5.5-10 × 1-2 mm, glabrous or sparsely pubescent; petals usually purple or pink, sometimes white (veins often darker), 15-25 × 3-8 mm, claw to 14 mm; filaments 5-12 mm; anthers 1.5-2 mm.
Fruits usually fusiform or lanceolate, sometimes ovoid or cylindrical; valvular segment 1-3.5 mm, smooth or, rarely, slightly constricted between seeds, not ribbed, beak narrowly to broadly conical to linear; style 10-40 mm.
Flowering: May-July