Cruciferous 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 distinguished from
Viola (plant) head-like, narrowed or often beaked. The flowers have a superior ovary with one cell, which has three placentae, containing many ovules. "Viola" are most often spring blooming with chasmogamous flowers with well-developed petals pollinated by insects. Many species also produce self-pollinated cleistogamous flowers in summer and autumn that do not open and lack petals. In some species the showy chasmogamous flowers are infertile (e.g.,"Viola papilionacea"). After flowering, fruit capsules are produced that split open by way of three valves. On drying, the capsules may eject seeds with considerable force to distances of several meters. The nutlike seeds have straight embryos,