# Nasturtium, that is, garden cress (Lepidium sativum)

**Nasturtio**

**Known today as.** Garden cress, *Lepidium sativum*. Not the flowering nasturtium (*Tropaeolum*) of modern gardens, a genus native to the Andes.

Kind: Plant

## What did Canale use it for?

Its seed among the milder vomits (ch. 5).

## What does modern science say?

Pungent in the leaf, like its relatives in the mustard family.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **glucotropaeolin**: a glucosinolate releasing benzyl isothiocyanate
- **benzyl isothiocyanate**: the mustard-oil pungency
- **vitamin C**: 

**Mechanism.** The seed’s mustard oil irritates the stomach, which is the mild vomit of Canale, and is antibacterial in the urine, the basis of a licensed German combination (Angocin) of cress and horseradish for urinary and respiratory infection.

**Dose.** Safe as a salad; the seed oil in quantity irritates.

**Standing.** A food; the isothiocyanate combination has German trials for recurrent urinary infection (Albrecht, 2007).

## What lore surrounds it?

Of the cress Folkard says Chaucer “calls the Cress by its old Saxon name of Kers, which may possibly have been the origin of the vulgar saying of not caring a ‘curse’ for anything,” and that the Spartans ate cresses with their bread “on account of an opinion held very generally among the ancients that those who ate Cress became firm and decided.” Of the nasturtium that borrowed the name, its shield-like leaves and helmet-shaped flowers earned it the Latin Tropæolum, “trophy,” its seed “according to Macer Floridus, possess a great power to repel serpents,” and Linnæus recorded his daughter's observation that its flowers “emit spontaneously, at certain intervals, sparks like electric ones, visible only in the evening.”

## What did the older authorities say?

**Pliny.** Says nasturtium may be grown with the greatest ease in summer or winter, and that it “has received that name from the smarting sensation which its pungency causes to the nostrils,” whence the proverb “that a sluggish man should eat nasturtium, to arouse him from his torpidity”; in Arabia, it is said, it grows to a marvellous size.

## Sources

- Pliny the Elder, *Natural History* 19.44, trans. J. Bostock & H. T. Riley (1855), Perseus Digital Library.
- Folkard, R. (1884). *Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics*, “Cress.” Project Gutenberg #44638.
- Folkard, R. (1884). *Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics*, “Leek.” Project Gutenberg #44638.
- Folkard, R. (1884). *Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics*, “Nasturtium.” Project Gutenberg #44638.
- Albrecht, U., et al. (2007). “A randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of a herbal medicinal product containing *Tropaeoli majoris herba* and *Armoraciae rusticanae radix* for the prophylactic treatment of patients with chronically recurrent lower urinary tract infections.” *Current Medical Research and Opinion* 23.

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*Nasturtium, that is, garden cress.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-01. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/nasturtium-that-is-garden-cress

Historical description, not medical advice.