Eruca sativa Seeds | Arugula
LATIN NAME: Eruca sativa
COMMON NAME: Arugula
Plant Profile
Arugula is a fast annual of twenty to sixty centimetres with deeply lobed leaves, four-petalled cream flowers veined with purple, and long thin pods that shatter as they ripen. The whole plant smells of mustard when it is bruised.
It grows wild on walls and waste ground around the Mediterranean and has been eaten since Roman times, when it was pickled and used as a stimulant. The cultivated forms are divided into narrow-leaved salad types and broader-leaved types grown for seed and for oil. The seed is small, round and pale brown, and a single plant can produce several thousand of them in a season, which is why the species appears in every crack in a Mediterranean town.
Science & Biotechnology
The peppery taste comes from glucosinolates, chiefly glucoerucin, which break down to isothiocyanates when the leaf is crushed. That reaction is the plant’s defence against insects, and it is also the reason the flavour fades within minutes of dressing a salad: the volatile compounds escape into the air.
The same glucosinolates are the subject of research into chemoprevention, and sulforaphane, the compound made from the related glucoraphanin in broccoli, has been studied in human trials with mixed results. Arugula contains far less of the precursor than broccoli, and no trial has shown a health effect from eating salad. Wild arugula is also more pungent than the cultivated salad types, and the difference is a matter of glucosinolate concentration rather than of species.
Uses & Benefits
The leaves are eaten raw in salads, on pizza and in sandwiches, and cooked in pasta dishes in southern Italy, where the bitter note is welcome against fat. The flowers are edible and are used to garnish.
The seed is pressed for an oil sold as jamba oil in India, used for pickling and for lamp fuel, and the pressed cake is fed to cattle. In Italy the seed is also sprouted. The plant is grown as a green manure in some rotations, since it germinates fast and covers the ground within a month.
Growing from Seed
Sow direct from early spring, one centimetre deep, in rows fifteen centimetres apart, and sow again every three weeks for a continuous supply. Germination takes three to five days at fifteen degrees, and the first leaves are ready in four weeks.
The plant bolts as soon as the weather turns hot, and bolted leaves turn bitter and tough, so sow in spring and again in late summer rather than in midsummer. Keep the soil moist, since drought hastens bolting. Flea beetles riddle the leaves in dry weather, and a row covered with fleece until it is established usually escapes them. A second sowing in late summer gives leaves into autumn, and a cloche will carry the plants through a mild winter in the open.
Our Take
The fastest salad leaf in the catalogue, and one that goes from seed to plate in a month. Sow little and often, and keep it out of the heat.
Related Reading
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