Brassica napus
Sutherland Kale
Marianne Hazlewood
Watercolour
Artwork size in cm, 36 x 46
£2450.00
My Sutherland kale looks quite different to what I expected, due to poor growing conditions and predation (I have now embraced insect nets). It is small, quite purple and not very far along, I have no flowers, or seeds (as they come in the second year), just leaves, but what beautiful leaves.
Sutherland kale, “Càil Cataibh” in Gaelic, is an old variety grown by the crofters of Sutherland. This kale was given to Elizabeth Wolcomb of West Drummie in Sutherland in the late 1950’s by Angus Simmonds, who was doing research on Kales at Edinburgh University at the time.
It is a hardy biennial, coming back in spring with fresh young leaves that can be cooked like spinach, its flower shoots, which come in the second year, are also good to eat, like sprouting broccoli shoots. Sutherland kale is a form of Brassica napus, which is most familiar in Britain as oilseed rape. In 1935, Korean-Japanese botanist Woo Jang-Choon published a theory about the origin of Brassica napus via hybridization between cabbage (Brassica oleracea) and turnip (Brassica rapa).
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