Watercress (Nasturtium officinale) grows in the fresh water of Asia and Europe. With hollow stems it floats and is easily gathered from the water's surface.
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Garden cress (Lepidium sativum) grows in soil but is also used in hydroponic gardening. Cress is one of the herbs named in the ancient medicine texts of Mesopotamia.
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Perhaps the oldest known leafy vegetables eaten by humans, cress and watercress belong to the cabbage and mustard family Brassicaceae. Garden cress and its seeds are especially significant in ancient medicine.
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Garden and watercress are long cultivated for improved flavor, healing properties and nutrition. The word cress comes from old Germanic cresso, meaning sharp or spicy. It's also called pepperwort, pepper grass or poor man's pepper.
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Garden cress can be grown in a pot or in the garden. It likes slightly alkaline soil. In India it's known as chandrashoor. The plant and its seeds, aaliv or aleev in Marathi, or halloon in India, are used in the system of Ayurveda, a medical philosophy over 5000 years old.
Cress and is a refreshing, tangy, slightly crunchy green for salads, sandwiches and cooking. Today varieties of cress are cultivated world-wide and may also be found growing in the wild.
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Non-cultivated watercress is subject to unwanted hitchhikers such as the liver fluke (Fasciola hepatica), a parasitic worm. Liver flukes first appear in Cyprus in 8300 - 7000 BCE. Wild watercress is also home to Giardia lamblia, a protozoan parasite causing the condition giardiasis.
Symptoms of giardiasis include abdominal pain, diarrhea and weight loss. The symptoms start up to three weeks after exposure, and last six weeks or more without treatment.
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Liver flukes can cause fever, chills, abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, enlarged liver and hives. Other symptoms include itching, diarrhea, and weight loss.
The worms can affect the liver, gallbladder and bile duct of humans. Without treatment the condition lasts the lifespan of the parasite, up to 30 years.
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In America, some indigenous people take cress to treat kidney problems and constipation. In parts of Africa it's used to stimulate abortion, and is also believed to cause sterility.
Early Romans (from 8th century BCE) use cress and watercress to treat mental illness. The 12th century AD German mystic Hildegard of Bingen recommends eating the plant steamed and drinking the water to cure jaundice or fever.
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Back in ancient Mesopotamia, watercress grows naturally in the shallow running waters of deltas, rivers and streams. Medicinally it might be used in poultice for treatment of eye ailments, swollen painful joints, skin eruptions and eczema. Crushed seeds of cress are part of an ancient Mesopotamian treatment for heart disease.
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In today's natural health cress is recommended to treat short-term swelling or inflammation of airways in the lungs (bronchitis). It's also thought to help treat flu, arthritis, baldness, constipation and low libido.
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Nutritionally, watercress has incredibly high levels of Vitamin K, an essential protein builder. 100 g (3.5 oz) of watercress contains 238% of a person's daily need of Vitamin K. Garden cress carries over twice as much.
It's also high in Vitamin C, A and B vitamins. Watercress and garden cress leafy greens are good sources of riboflavin, calcium and manganese. Leaves, stems and fruits can be eaten raw or cooked. Garden cress, cultivated for thousands of years, packs almost twice as much vitamin and mineral power as naturally occurring watercress.
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Garden cress has the advantage of cultivation under known conditions. Whether for health or flavoring cress is a natural herb with a wide variety of uses.
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