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Pringlea antiscorbutica
Also called Pringlea
Kerguelen cabbage is a cold-climate perennial in the cabbage family, the only species in its genus, native to subantarctic islands. It is grown mainly as a hardy curiosity in cool temperate gardens, and it needs cool, moist, open conditions with full sun.
Pringlea antiscorbutica, commonly known as Kerguelen cabbage, is a flowering plant and the sole member of the monotypic genus Pringlea in the family Brassicaceae. Its common name comes from the archipelago of its discovery, the Kerguelen Islands, and its generic name derives from Sir John Pringle, president of the Royal Society at the time of its discovery by Captain James Cook's Surgeon, William Anderson in 1776.
Despite its appearance and edibility, it is not related to the common broadleaf plantain.
Pringlea antiscorbutica grows on the remote Heard Island and McDonald Islands, Crozet, Prince Edward and Kerguelen Islands. The ancestor of P. antiscorbutica probably migrated from South America some five million years ago.
Pringlea antiscorbutica is edible, containing high levels of potassium. Its leaves contain an oil rich in vitamin C, a fact which, in the days of sailing ships, made it very attractive to sailors suffering from scurvy, hence the specific epithet antiscorbutica, which means "against scurvy" in Low Latin. It was essential to the diets of the whalers on Kerguelen when pork, beef, or seal meat was used up. In May 1840, botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker was the first to make a technical analysis of the plant, and to assign the Latin name.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Pringlea 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.
