The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Brassica napus
Also called Rape, Oilseed Rape, Oil Seed Rape, Swedish Turnip, Rutabaga, Winter Rape, Siberian Kale
Rapeseed is a yellow-flowered oilseed crop in the cabbage family, grown mainly for its oil-rich seed and grown as an annual or biennial. Winter types are sown in autumn and need a cold period to flower, while spring types are sown in spring.
Rapeseed (Brassica napus subsp. napus), also known as rape, oilseed rape and canola, is a yellow-flowered member of the Brassicaceae family.
The plant is cultivated primarily for its oil-rich seed, which naturally contains mildly toxic erucic acid. The term canola refers to a group of rapeseed cultivars with very low levels of erucic acid that are prized as food for humans and animals. The plant is the third-largest source of vegetable oil and the second-largest source of protein meal in the world.
Crops from the genus Brassica, including rapeseed, were among the earliest plants to be widely cultivated by humankind as early as 10,000 years ago. Rapeseed was being cultivated in India as early as 4000 B.C.E. and it spread to China and Japan 2000 years ago.
Rapeseed is predominantly cultivated in its winter form in most of Europe and Asia due to the requirement of vernalization to start the process of flowering. It is sown in autumn and remains in a leaf rosette on the soil surface during the winter. The plant grows a long vertical stem in the next spring followed by lateral branch development. It generally flowers in late spring with the process of pod development and ripening occurring over a period of 6–8 weeks until midsummer.
In Northern Ireland, B. napus and B. rapa are recorded as escapes in roadside verges and waste ground.
Rapeseed is grown for the production of edible vegetable oils, animal feed, and biodiesel. Rapeseed was the third-leading source of vegetable oil in the world in 2000, after soybean and palm oil. It is the world's second-leading source of protein meal after soybean.
Abyssinian mustard · Mustard · Zha cai · India mustard · Rutabaga · Tatsoi · Rhamphospermum nigrum · Gai lan · Cauliflower · Cabbage · Brussels sprout · Kohlrabi
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Rapeseed by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
