In truth, many individual veggies who fancy themselves unique are in fact, cabbages. The wild cabbage, which probably resembled collards, is a parent plant with impressive offspring. Native to coastal England and Wales, as well as the Mediterranean and the Adriatic, this plant gave birth to cabbages, cauliflower, collards, broccoli Brussels sprouts, kale and kohlrabi.

All of these are Brassica oleracea. Food historian Waverly Root has pointed out that all those vegetables were developed by farmers “encouraging the development of one element or another already present in the original plant.” For example, broccoli and cauliflower were cabbage flowers urged to new heights. Brussels sprouts were cabbage buds, appearing where leaves met stem, persuaded to form themselves into mini cabbages. The wild cabbage itself, noted for the tendency of its leaves to curl up, was exhorted to form itself into “heads.” And so on. Thus one plant has created its own successful spin-offs.

The cabbage plant resembles a large—some can be as wide as one foot-- green or purplish flower stuck on a sturdy stalk. Its leaves can be flat or wrinkled, depending on variety. On the other hand, the harvested core or head of the plant does indeed resemble a round cartoon human head, its large leaves extending out in the manner of hair and a beard, or alternatively, a sunbonnet.

A cool climate plant with a love of moisture, the cabbage plant probably came from coastal Northern Europe, though was no one writing anything down about its appearance at the time. (The Chinese had their own “Chinese cabbage” which evolved in Asia.) It moved south and east into the Mediterranean from its more northerly birthplace, either carried by people or helped along by animals. Eventually cabbage became known to the Greeks who ate it but didn’t seem too elated about it. With the exception of Diogenes, a Greek philosopher who is said to have lived his long and peculiar life largely in a tub, eating cabbage and cabbage alone.

Across Northern Europe, cabbage became a standard vegetable in everyone’s pot from the fall of the Romans up to the present day.

The earliest settlers on North America’s eastern shores brought cabbage seeds with them—from England, from the Netherlands, from Germany and Scandinavia. New Netherland, the colony established by the Dutch in about 1621, was cabbage growing country up and down the Hudson River and into neighboring areas. Citizens of the capital city of New Amsterdam, now New York, which was established in 1624, ate heartily of “speck ende kool,” pork with cabbage. At about the same time their German neighbors in Pennsylvania and New Jersey concocted vats of “pepper hash”—pickled cabbage mixed with American peppers.

Wisconsin produces more cabbage for processing than any other state in the U.S. Most processed cabbage goes into the production of sauerkraut. Florida is the leading state in the United States for winter and spring production of fresh market cabbage. Under usual conditions growers can harvest two crops of cabbage each season, beginning in November and ending in June. In the early 1920’s citizens of the U.S. ate a whopping 27 pounds of cabbage per year—these days the average per capita consumption is about nine pounds.