Dame’s Rocket

Dame’s Rocket is an exceptionally tall (three foot), biennial.  The leaves of the plant are said to edible.  I tried eating a leaf but found the texture—rather like Velcro—somewhat appalling.  The leaf was mostly flavorless.

The plant, a member of the mustard family, is native to Eurasia, and considered invasive in some regions, including nearby Alberta, Canada.  Dame’s rocket is a prolific seed producer and can quickly escape your garden.

I first saw the plant growing in spectacular fashion alongside the wall of a house near where I exited I-15 to access Lincoln Road on my daily return home from work.  One afternoon, I saw an elderly man watering the plants as I drove by.  I quickly flipped my truck around and pulled into the place.   I rolled down my truck window to talk with the man.  “Excuse me.  I have been driving by those flowers and admiring them.  What are those?”

The man stopped spraying water at the base of the plants.  “They are Dame’s rocket.”

“They are so vivid.”

“You want some?”

“Sure!”

“I’ll grab a shovel and we can dig some up for you.”

“You don’t mind?”

“Nope.  You just have to make sure they go to seed to keep ‘em going.”

That was somewhere back around 1993.

I planted the rocket in a small “flowerish” bed near the back deck in my xeriscape yard.  The plants happily survived there for all these years in a small but stable patch.  In the last two years, however, the rocket has escaped and sprouted up in front of my house and in a few places in back.

I really love the beauty of this plant and only recently discovered rocket to be considered invasive.  I am thinking I may need to chase it back to my stable little patch and eventually find something native to fill its place.

Posted are two photographs of my escaped rocket flowers.

—Mitchell Hegman