Invigorating Watercress

"You don't eat 'em," returned Mr Pumblechook, sighing and nodding his head several times, as if he might have expected that, and as if abstinence from watercresses were consistent with my downfall. . .
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens

As kids, my siblings and I used "looking for watercress" as an excuse to poke around crumbled springhouses. Who knew what treasures of rusting tinware or broken pottery we might unearth? Besides, it was great fun to perch on the moss-covered, rectangular rocks and dangle fingers or toes briefly in the numbingly cold water. With its tangy taste and array of health benefits, the cress that flourishes in such frigid conditions might be considered similarly bracing!

Its official name, nasturtium officinale, derives from the Latin nasus tortus ("twisted nose")--a natural reaction to the plant's peppery odor and flavor! It has also been known as roripa or radicula nasturtium aquaticum. Roripa may come from roro ("to be moist") and ripa ("riverbank"), and radicula indicates "small roots." Aquaticum means "growing in or near water." In Old England, cress was originally pronounced as kers or cerse and considered poor man's food, which explains the phrase "not worse a curse."

Despite its name, there is, Pamela Jones reports in Just Weeds, "no truth in the rumor that nasturtium officinale is in any way related to the garden nasturtium, whose botanical name is actually tropaeolum majus. The fact that tropaeolum majus is also popularly known as Indian cress, although it is not a cress at all, is strictly a coincidence. And the fact that it happens to be equally pungent and wholesome as watercress merely proves that a plant does not have to be a cress to taste like one."

Although Jones assumes John Gerard's flos cuculi ("cuckoo flower") was watercress, the sixteenth-century herbalist actually refers to cuckoo flower as nasturtium aquaticum minus or "lesser water cress." Among its nicknames, he includes cardamine and lady-smockes. So I would guess that flos cuculi was actually cardamine pratensis, sometimes also known as "meadow cress."

British street vendors once sold watercress in bunches, and their customers most frequently consumed it in a sandwich for breakfast. In England's milder climate, the plant is considered to be at its best "during any month with an R in it." Here, it would be covered with ice and snow during much of that time, and would probably be a bit small to harvest even in March. So the cress season in PA generally covers the late spring and late fall months.

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