Chinese students sell ‘cabbage rose’ Valentine’s Day gift that’s all heart
- Nanjing Agricultural University professor developed the hybrid ‘yellow rose’ when he was trying to boost the vitamin C content of the napa variety
- The highly nutritious vegetable can also withstand very low temperatures
A Chinese university team had a fresh offering for Valentine’s Day this year – a hybrid cabbage variety that “blooms” in the shape of a rose.
After it was promoted by students online, the highly nutritious “yellow rose” sold out within a day, Shanghai-based Thepaper.cn reported on Thursday.
A cross between a napa cabbage and a yellow heart cabbage, it was developed by Hou Xilin, a professor from Nanjing Agricultural University’s horticulture college.
Hou told the news website he had spent 36 years studying the oblong-shaped napa and creating new varieties of cabbage. He said the “yellow rose” was developed accidentally when he tried to double the vitamin C content of the napa in 2000 by creating a new hybrid.
This year, Hou put together a team of students to package his latest crop of rose-shaped cabbages into bouquets and market them in time for February 14.