Garden Cress
Garden Cress
Food Plant
A peppery little salad plant that sprouts in a day or two — the classic plant for watching seeds grow.
💡 Fun Facts
- Cress can sprout in just a day or two on damp paper — one of the fastest classroom plants of all.
- It has a peppery taste, which comes from natural mustard oils.
- You can go from a dry seed to a tasty shoot in about a week!
📅 Through the Year
- Flowering:June to July
Name Story
Lepidium sativum
means “the cultivated little-scale plant”
What does its name mean?
- Lepidium — little scaleGreek lepis ‘scale, flake’
- sativum — sown, cultivatedLatin serere ‘to sow’Decode this word →
‘Little scale’ points to the tiny, flat, scale-like seed-pods this plant makes. ‘Cultivated’ marks it as the cress we grow on purpose — the familiar ‘cress’ of mustard-and-cress on the windowsill.