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Salad Herbs, Small

There are certain plants which are employed, chiefly in the seed leaf, or when very young, for the purpose of procuring salads throughout the year, or at times and in situations when no others can be had. Some of these are also mixed with the larger salad plants to improve their flavour or wholesome qualities. The sort most in use in this country are mustard, cresses, rape, turnip, radish, white cabbage, cabbage-lettuce, etc. Some of these may be procured at all seasons of the year, and are cut when not over a week or ten days old. Being of a warm relish, if allowed to grow too large, so as to run into the rough leaf, they become of a disagreeably strong, hot taste. Mustard is remarkable for the rapidity of its growth, and on this account is frequently sown in the ground, as a small salad, together with cress. The seeds strewed on wet flannel, and placed in a warm situation, even by the fireside, frequently shoot out their seed-leaves in a day or two--sometimes even in a few hours--a circumstance which is frequently taken advantage of in long voyages. Ships going to the East Indies used to have boxes placed on the deck wherein mustard and cress were sowed for the purpose of getting salad on the voyage; and the number of crops thus raised was surprising. The garden-cress stands at the head of the small-salad plants, and is much cultivated for this purpose. It has a very warm but pleasant flavour. By the aid of a little artificial heat, it may be had fresh all through the winter. The variety known as American cress grows wild in Great Britain on moist or watery ground. It is aromatic and pungent, but rather bitter. It is sometimes cultivated for winter and early spring salad. It occasionally goes under the name of French cress. The winter cress is also found wild in this country in watery spots and slow-running streams. In flavour and use it much resembles the last.

The water-cress has long been highly esteemed. It is found in great abundance on the edges of running streams, preferring clean water to that which is muddy. Care must be taken to distinguish it from the water-parsnip, which often grows with it, and which is poisonous.

Burnet, another small-salad herb, is a perennial plant indigenous to Britain, and found in dry, upland, calcareous soils. It is occasionally cultivated in gardens. The leaves of the burnet are used in salads; when lightly bruised, they smell like cucumber. They have a somewhat warm taste. Rape, a native of Britain, is sometimes grown in gardens, and its leaves are used for salad in the same way as mustard and cress.