Rocket's name traces back to a Latin word for caterpillar
Rocket, arugula, rucola: one peppery Mediterranean salad leaf wears a dozen names. The English one comes via French and Italian from Latin eruca, meaning caterpillar, while arugula only reached American print in 1960, courtesy of a New York Times food editor borrowing an Italian dialect word.
Eruca sativa is an annual in the cabbage and mustard family, native to southern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia. It grows between 20 centimetres and a metre tall, with deeply lobed leaves that end in one large lobe. Its flowers are creamy white with purple veins and yellow stamens, and the seeds ripen in short beaked pods. The species name sativa is Latin for sown, marking it as a garden plant.
Some botanists treat it as a subspecies of Eruca vesicaria, but the two differ in pod shape, growth habit and whether the sepals persist, and they do not interbreed freely, so the Plants of the World Online database lists it as its own species. It is also easily confused with perennial wall rocket, a different plant used in the same way.
In the wild it favours dry, disturbed ground and feeds the caterpillars of moths such as the garden carpet. It has naturalised in temperate regions worldwide and become a noxious invader in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona and California. Gardeners find it quick: plants set 15 centimetres apart are ready in 40 to 50 days. It likes sun, cool weather and rich, moist soil; heat stops leaf growth and alters the taste, and light frost tints the leaves red.
Leaves, flowers, young pods and seeds are all edible. Raw leaves are 92 percent water, with 25 calories per 100 grams, and are rich in folate and vitamin K. Italians have tossed it into salads since Roman times, scatter it on pizza after baking, and in Apulia cook it with pasta. Romans pair it with sliced beef and Parmesan, Turks serve it beside fish, and Slovenes mix it with potatoes. In West Asia, Pakistan and northern India the seeds are pressed for taramira oil, used in pickles.
Source: Eruca sativa
