Today I Learned: Rutabaga, Weird Veg

[mishalak]

In today I learned it turns out that the rutabaga is not just a Swedish turnip. They are a cross between cabbage and a turnip. That then can breed true to itself. Weird! The story about the discovery is great too. A Korean-Japanese scientist named Woo Jang-choon was able to figure this out in the 1930s, which was hard because no genetic fingerprinting and the crosses between these plants happened centuries before. And this means that canola/rapeseed is also the same type of cross, Brassica napus.


All these relationships are shown by the Triangle of U. It does make me wonder if there are other potential vegetables lurking in crosses between closely related species. After all natural hybrids are how we got bananas as well.

Comments

[filkerdave]

That's kind of cool