Cruciferous vegetables such vegetables. Cruciferous vegetables Cruciferous vegetables are vegetables of the family Brassicaceae (also called Cruciferae) with many genera, species, and cultivars being raised for food production such as cauliflower, cabbage, garden cress, bok choy, broccoli, Brussels sprouts and similar green leaf vegetables. The family takes its alternative name (Cruciferae, New Latin for "cross-bearing") from the shape of their flowers, whose four petals resemble a cross. Ten of the most common cruciferous vegetables eaten by people, known colloquially in North America as cole crops and in Britain and Ireland as "brassicas", are in a single species ("Brassica oleracea"); they are not
Plant defense against herbivory reproduction. Many models have been proposed to explore how and why some plants make this investment in defenses against herbivores. The optimal defense hypothesis attempts to explain how the kinds of defenses a particular plant might use reflect the threats each individual plant faces. This model considers three main factors, namely: risk of attack, value of the plant part, and the cost of defense. The first factor determining optimal defense is risk: how likely is it that a plant or certain plant parts will be attacked? This is also related to the "plant apparency hypothesis", which states that a plant