Plant of the Week 05/21/2007: Stock (Matthiola incana)

Plant of the Week 05/21/2007

Matthiola incana (L.) R. Brown

Photographed by: Chelsie Vandaveer
Credits: Stock photographed at a local nursery.
Other Information: Olympus C-8080wz

Stocks, sea stocks, wallflowers and wall-gillyflowers are old English names for a confusing mix of crucifers, plants now classified in the Brassicaceae, the mustard family. Gillyflower or gillofloure, as John Gerard spelled it in 1597, also referred to pinks and sweet Williams, members of the Caryophyllaceae, the carnation family. Today, stock is the vernacular for species of Matthiola and in particular, Matthiola incana (L.) R. Brown.

The stock is a short-lived perennial native to the lands along the Mediterranean from Spain to Turkey and south to Egypt. It is a plant of rocky cliffs and harsh dry land. Believed introduced to England sometime in the 1500s, stocks became popular garden plants for as Gerard wrote, "...a pleasant purple colour, and the others white...we have some that beare double floures, which are of divers colours, greatly esteemed for the beautie of their floures, and pleasant sweet smell."

That "beauty of the flowers and pleasant sweet smell" makes the stock an odd member of its family. (As opposed to the aroma of cooking cabbage.) A fragrant bed of stocks in the garden makes spring and early summer delightful, but like cabbage, the plants do not tolerate the heat. By midsummer, they set seed in long pods, properly called siliques.

For horticultural purposes, the stock has four cultivar lineages: the East Lothian, a biennial, the Brompton, a biennial, the Ten Week, an annual, and the Column, grown for the floral industry. Of the Ten Week line, there are a number of named series, some tall, up to 60 centimeters (20 inches), and others dwarf, under 30 (12 inches).

Gerard had little respect for the medicinal use of stock. "...they are not used...except by Empericks (empirics, practicing medicine by intuition or experience) and Quacksalvers (vain pretenders to medical skill), about love and lust matters, which for modestie I omit."

The stock is not just beauty and pleasant smell as Gerard thought. In three trial locations in Israel, stocks were grown from the autumn of 1991 through spring 1992. The seeds are rich in oils and up to 65 percent of the oil consists of omega-3-linolenic acid, one of the fatty acids essential to good health.

(Compiled from: "Matthiola", A-Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants, C. Brickell and J.D. Zuk, eds., American Horticultural Society, DK Publishing, NY, 1996; "Matthiola incana: Source of Omega-3-Linolenic Acid", Zohara Yaniv, D. Schafferman, M. Zur, and I. Shamir, Progress in New Crops, ASHS Press, Arlington, VA, posted to the internet by Center for New Crops and Plant Products, Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Purdue University; "Chapter 120. Of Stock Gillofloures", The Herball or Generall Historie of Plants, John Gerard, 1597)