Brassica campestris to America

Brassica campestris to America
The turnips and other European cultivars of Brassica campestris have been introduced to the Americas in innumerable occasions.

The first record of introduction of turnips to eastern North America was in 1540 to Canada by Cartier. Turnips were being grown in the Virginia colony by 1609 and were widely grown in other colonies by the 18th century.

In Canada, B. campestris eventually became a huge oilseed crop.

Spaniards introduced turnips a soon after 1500 to Hispaniola, other West Indian islands and Panama. By about 1550 they were adopted into Indian gardens in Colombia.

Field mustard, the unimproved weed form of Brassica campestris was independently introduced to the Americas and spread widely as a volunteer in wheat and barley fields.

Indian farmers of the Andean valleys have accepted it as a useful weed. While they do not want it to dominate the grain fields, neither do they want to eliminate it.

They pull the young mustard plants out of the grain to cook as a green vegetable and for livestock fodder.

Enough of the weeds remain to produce another year’s crop. A similar situation is found among the Tarahumar of northwestern Mexico.

These Indians presumably obtained B. campestris as a weed of grain crops brought by early Spanish missionaries.

The Indians not only gather the weed for green, but also sow patches of it an an incipient domesticate, selecting seed for production of more greens and swollen roots.
Brassica campestris to America

History of Brassica campestris

Early history of Brassica campestris
Commonly known as field mustard or turnip mustard. The wild type is a slender-rooted, branching annual native to temperate Eurasia. It was probably a minor member of the pioneer flora of naturally open habitat that became enormously more abundant as a Neolithic weed of wheat and other crops.

The most primitive cultivars appear to be the rapes, i.e., those brown primarily as oilseed crops. Sanskrit records of sarson, a variety of B. campestris, show that it has been an important oilseed crop in India since at least 1500 BC.

Sarson and other varieties of B. campestris are still very commonly grown as oilseeds in the subcontinent.

Related varieties may have been equally ancient crops in southwestern Asia in pre-classical times, but they did not invade the domain of the olive in the Mediterranean.

The Roman encountered B. campestris as a crop of the barbarians in Gaul, not as rapeseed but as the turnip.

There are old Germanic, Slavic and Celtic, names for the turnip, and it evidently was selected as a root vegetable in northern Europe in antiquity.

Rape as an oilseed crop finally arrive in northern Europe from the east in the late Middle Ages, but for centuries, it renamed a very minor crop.

Turnips, for both table vegetables and livestock fodder became increasingly important in northern Europe between the 15th an 18th centuries, largely because of development of new varieties.

One these is the stubble turnip, selected for very rapid growth in the autumn after the grain crop, usually rye, has been harvested.
History of Brassica campestris