Nasturtium and Watercress

Agnes deLanvallei March 2005

Nasturtium is the modern common name of Tropaeolum majus, a plant from the west coast of South America according to the Cambridge World History of Food (Kiple and Ornelas 2000). They give "Indian cress" as an alternate common name. It has been used as food in Perufor thousands of years.

Watercress is a native of Eurasia, known to the Romans. The scientific name Linneaus applied to it was Nasturtium officinale which has been revised to Rorippa nasturtium-aquaticum.

"cress" is a term applied to a wide range of garden vegetables, including Tropaeolum species, introduced from the New World in the late 16th century. (Mabey 1987, p. 12) The Latin word for cress appears to nasturtium. Europe has dozens of similar species, from garden cress to watercress and many other field cresses, now in several genera. Today, watercress (Rorippa formerly Nasturtium), bittercress (Cardamine) and garden cress (Lepidium) are all plants in the mustard family (Brassicaceae).

While there are cresses (nasturtium) in the Greek herbal of Dioscorides (Gunther 1934), they are not specifically watercress. Macer wrote "Watercress is called nasturtium ". While the original Macer was an Latin poem written about 1000 AD, the translation available to me is based on a middle English version dated to end of the 13^th Century. (O'Hanlon 1984).

Gerard is illuminating on the subject: Gerard's Book 2 covers, in this order: wild radish (modernly Brassicaceae), horseradish (modernly Brassicaceae), winter cresses (modernly Brassicaceae), mustard (modernly Brassicaceae), rocket (modernly Brassicaceae), tarragon (modernly Asteraceae), garden cresses (modernly Brassicaceae), Indian cresses (Trophaeolum modernly Trophaeolaceae), sciatica cresses (modernly Brassicaceae), bank cresses (modernly Brassicaceae), dock cresses (looks like Caryophyllaceae), water parsnip and watercress (water parsnip is Apiaceae, but the watercress is pretty clearly what we call watercress today, Rorippa nasturtium-aquatica) and wild watercress (Cardamine, modernly Brassicaceae). Gerard calls the common watercress Nasturtium aquatica.

Gerard calls Indian cress (now called Trophaeolum) Nasturtium Indicum. He reports it has recently come from the New World by way of Spain. He comments "some have deemed [Indian cress], a kinde of Convolvulus or Binde-weed; yet I am well contented that it retaines the former name, for that the smell and taste shew it to be a kind of cresses." (p. 252).

Thus, apparently nasturtium was the Latin for "cress", and the term "cress" covered many sharp-tasting plants. The common English name for what Linnaeus named Nasturtium officinale (i.e. the official -- real -- cress) became watercress. The New World plant, ultimately classified in its own plant family (not the same family as watercress, bitter cress and garden cress), Trophaeolum majus (plant family Trophaeolaceae), retained nasturtium as its English common name.

Oddly, this problem is commented on by philologist J.R.R.Tolkien, who wrote "nasturians" in The Fellowship of the Ring. According to Tolkien, trophaeolus was nasturtian and watercress nasturtium, though clearly they were already confused when The Fellowship of the Ring was being set in print. [ full quote].

Literature Cited

Carter, Humphrey, ed. 1981. The letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. Houghton Mifflin, Publishers. Boston.

Gerard, John. The Herbal or General history of plants. Complete 1633 edition as revised and enlarged by Thomas Johnson. Dover Publications, New York 1975.

Gunther, Robert T, editor. 1934. The Greek herbal of Dioscorides. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. {written approximately 64 AD, "illustrated by a Byzantine A.D. 512. Englished by John Goodyer A.D. 1655"]

Kiple, Kenneth F, and Kriemhild Ornelas, editors. 2000. The Cambridge world history of food. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK.

Mabey, Richard, ed. 1987. The gardener's labyrith Thomas Hill.Oxford University Press, Oxford UK.[reproduction of the first popular gardening manual, 1577)

O'Hanlon, David P. 1981. Macer's Virtue of Herbs. Hemkunt Press, Delhi.