Plant · P-355

Wintercress

Barbarea vulgaris

Wintercress is a trap crop grown to protect other cabbage-family plants from diamondback moth - the moth strongly prefers to lay its eggs here over broccoli or cabbage, but the larvae that hatch die from the plant's own bitter compounds before they can do any damage. It also flowers earlier than almost anything else around it, a mass of yellow bloom that feeds the hoverflies whose larvae then go on to eat aphids everywhere else in the garden. It is a cool-season plant that germinates in fall, holds a green rosette through winter, flowers in spring, and dies out with the first real summer heat, self-sowing readily enough to replant its own patch every year. The leaves are edible in small amounts with a sharp, hot-cress flavor, but eating much of them can cause kidney trouble - the young flowering stems, cooked like broccoli, make the better and safer vegetable.