name: Rocket Salad
flavor_db_name_variants: rocket salad
source: foodb
status: draft
food_db_id: Rocket salad
id: 244
name_scientific: Eruca vesicaria
description: Eruca sativa (syn. E. vesicaria subsp. sativa (Miller) Thell., Brassica eruca L.) is an edible annual plant, commonly known as salad rocket, roquette, rucola, rugula, colewort, and, in the United States, arugula. It is sometimes conflated with Diplotaxis tenuifolia, the perennial wall rocket, another plant of the Brassicaceae family, which in the past was used in the same manner. 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 and Turkey in the east. The Latin adjective sativa in the plant's binomial is derived from satum, the supine of the verb sero, meaning "to sow", indicating that the seeds of the plant were sown in gardens. Eruca sativa differs from E. vesicaria in having early deciduous sepals. Some botanists consider it a subspecies of Eruca vesicaria: E. vesicaria subsp. sativa. Still others do not differentiate between the two. Eruca sativa grows 20?100 centimetres (8?39 in) in height. The leaves are deeply pinnately lobed with four to ten small lateral lobes and a large terminal lobe. The flowers are 2?4 cm (0.8?1.6 in) in diameter, arranged in a corymb in typical Brassicaceae fashion; with creamy white petals veined with purple, and with yellow stamens; the sepals are shed soon after the flower opens. The fruit is a siliqua (pod) 12?35 millimetres (0.5?1.4 in) long with an apical beak, and containing several seeds (which are edible).
itis_id: 502429
wikipedia_id: Rocket_(salad)
picture_file_name: 244.jpg
picture_content_type: image/jpeg
picture_file_size: 70936
picture_updated_at: 2012-04-20T09:38:53.000Z
legacy_id: 259
food_group: Vegetables
food_subgroup: Leaf vegetables
food_type: Type 1
created_at: 2011-02-09T00:37:28.000Z
updated_at: 2019-12-11T19:32:30.000Z
creator_id: null
updater_id: null
export_to_afcdb: false
category: specific
ncbi_taxonomy_id: 180536
export_to_foodb: false
public_id: FOOD00244