Barbarea vulgaris: Golden Spring Flowers of Yellow Rocket Brighten Roadsides

Summary: Barbarea vulgaris is an Old World native known commonly as wintercress or yellow rocket. The edible spring roadside wildflower does in cabbage family pests.

yellow rocket (Barbarea vulgaris Ait. f.): John D. Byrd, Mississippi State University, Bugwood.org, CC BY 3.0, via Forestry Images

Barbarea vulgaris is an Old World wildflower native to Eurasia. Its homelands encompass most of Europe as well as parts of North Africa and of temperate Asia.

The wildflower's adaptability has encouraged its massive introduction outside of its native range, with firm naturalization, oftentimes negatively perceived as a weed, in North America.

Barbarea vulgaris is naturalized in France's North American overseas territory of Saint Pierre and Miquelon.
The Old World wildflower claims naturalized homelands in all ten Canadian provinces.

Barbarea vulgaris is naturalized in all of the continental United States, excluding Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada and Texas.

Barbarea vulgaris is known commonly in English as bittercress, garden yellow rocket, herb Barbara, rocketcress, winter rocket, wintercress or yellow rocket.

Yellow rocket thrives in a variety of habitats.

The congenial herb is undaunted by such challenging soils as calcareous, clay, sandy and siliceous.

Yellow rocket fares admirably in disturbed environments, such as ditches, pastures and roadsides.

Multiple stems emerge from the plant's taproot system, attaining a height range of 12 inches (30 centimeters) to 3 feet 3 inches (1 meter).

Lower leaves radiate from the stem base and feature small leaf lobes along the stalk and a large lobe at the tip. Contrastingly, cauline (Latin: caulis, "stalk"), or upper stem, leaves grow directly from the stem as small, sessile (Latin: sessilis, "resting on the surface, sitting"), or stalkless, foliage.

Flowers open in April atop stems in dense racemes (Latin: racemus, "cluster of grapes") as short-stalked floral clusters. Yellow rocket's golden flowers exhibit the cross-shaped arrangement of four petals characteristic of members of the mustard family, Brassicaceae, also known as crucifers (Latin: crucifer: "cross-bearing") or as the cabbage family.

Yellow rocket does not suffer from the plight of other crucifers. Although Barbarea vulgaris contains sulfur-containing compounds known as glucosinolates that attract pesky crucifer specialists such as the diamondback moth (Plutella xylostella), also known as the cabbage moth, the spring bloomer zaps crucifer nemeses with undetected saponins, naturally soapy chemical compounds that bring about the demise of larvae.

With its phenomenal allure as a preferential ovipositional, or egg-laying, site, yellow rocket offers great promise in an agricultural polyculture (one or more different crops in the same field) of companion planting for dead-end crop trapping. Dead-end crop trapping lures pests away from the cash crops, such as broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage, so that egg laying takes place on a hostile floral site, such as yellow rocket, that prevents the development of pest offspring.

All parts of yellow rocket are edible, from its root, which pickles or roasts tastefully, to its salad-garnishing flowers.

Barbarea vulgaris derives its common name of bittercress from the bitter pungency of old leaves.

Mildly pungent young leaves are appreciated in salads in Europe.

Valued for natural health benefits as a nutraceutical, yellow rocket is packed with such nutrients as calcium, fiber, potassium, vitamin A, vitamin B and vitamin C.

April is glowing with yellow rocket's golden flowers on prominent display in pastures and roadsides near my yard.

The golden profusion continues into May and June.

yellow rocket (Barbarea vulgaris), illustrated by English botanical draughtsman and glass painter Isaac Russell (flourished 1830s-1840s); W. Baxter's British Phaenogamous Botany (1843), vol. VI, Plate 450: Public Domain, via Biodiversity Heritage Library

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

yellow rocket (Barbarea vulgaris Ait. f.): John D. Byrd, Mississippi State University, Bugwood.org, CC BY 3.0, via Forestry Images @ http://www.forestryimages.org/browse/detail.cfm?imgnum=1391085

yellow rocket (Barbarea vulgaris), illustrated by English botanical draughtsman and glass painter Isaac Russell (flourished 1830s-1840s); W. Baxter's British Phaenogamous Botany (1843), vol. VI, Plate 450: Public Domain, via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/48840814

For further information:

Baxter, W. (William). British Phaenogamous Botany; or, Figures and Descriptions of the Genera of British Flowering Plants, vol. VI: Plate 360. Oxford, England: Published by the Author, 1843.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/48840814

Moerman, Daniel E. Native American Medicinal Plants: An Ethnobotanical Dictionary. Portland OR: Timber Press, 2009.