Turnip Turnip is commonly known as dash in the north. It is also called skillet. This is not taro, not taro. There are many people who confuse taro with yam.

Turnip, Chinese medicine. Cruciferae brassica plant turnip Brassica rapa L. for the root or leaf. Plant turnip, all over China are cultivated. It has the efficacy of eliminating food and gas, detoxifying and eliminating swelling. It is mainly used for treating the indigestion of food, cold pain in the heart and abdomen, cough, boils and carbuncles.

Morphological features

Plant turnip, also known as ground cranberry "Inner Mongolia Botanical Journal", flat turnip, round root (Yunnan, Tibet), dish (Zhejiang). It is a biennial herb, up to 100 centimeters high; the tuberous root is fleshy, spherical, oblate or oblong, with white, yellow or red skin, and the root is fleshy white or yellow, without spicy flavor; the stem is erect, branched, slightly hairy in the lower part, and glabrous in the upper part.

Basal leaves lyrate or compound, 20-34 cm long, terminal lobe or leaflet very large, margin undulate or lobed, lateral lobes or leaflets about 5 pairs, tapering downward, with a few scattered prickly hairs above and white sharp prickly hairs below; petiole 10-16 cm long, with small lobes; middle and upper stem leaves oblong-lanceolate, 3-12 cm long, glabrous, pruinose, base broadly cordate lanceolate, at least half-amplexicaul, sessile.

Racemes terminal; flowers 4-5 mm in diameter; pedicels 10-15 mm long; sepals oblong, 4-6 mm long; petals bright yellow, oblanceolate, 4-8 mm long, shortly clawed. Long-horned fruit linear, 3.5-8 cm long, petals with 1 conspicuous midvein; beak 10-20 mm long; fruiting pedicel to 3 cm long. Seeds globose, ca. 1.8 mm in diam., light yellow-brown, black near the umbilicus, with finely reticulate areoles.

Flowering March-April, fruiting May-June.