Cabbage

About

Common Names: Cabbage
Classification: Culinary Vegetable
Description: A green leafy plant cultivated as a vegetable food, which forms a firm ball of leaves around a pithy core. It has a slightly bitter taste if eaten raw, which is removed through cooking. Cabbage is a popular food crop, being cold tolerant, and relatively fast growing.

Rarity: Common
Distribution: Sub-arctic through Sub-tropical
Life Cycle: Flowering in the fall, cabbages disperse seeds after the first frosts.

Cultivation: Cabbages are harvested in the early to late fall.
Culinary: Cabbages find use in a wide variety of dishes, including soups and stews, fried, fermented, shredded in salads,or used as leafy wraps for other mixed foods such as grains and meats.
Medicinal: Both mashed cabbage and cabbage juice finds use in anti-inflammatory poultices, and lineaments.
Other: Cabbages juice is used as a fixative in some dyes.

Cultural: Cabbage is a ubiquitous food staple throughout its range. More specifically it features heavily in the history of Lo Ark, where is was an essential food during the siege during the Iskandean War of Independence in 135 YG. Cabbages following the successful capture of the town by insurrectionist forces, the ruling family of Ark Hiem, House Tiunsel, took the cabbage as a sigil representing enduring strength in hard times.
Religious: The cabbage is an important symbol in the Twinned Goddess religion. It is served as a staple food for pilgrims and distributed to the poor. Symbolically, the cabbage is used as a metaphor for the for the worldly realm, with the layers representing the morality of the treahni soul and growth of the spirit through the hardships of life.