The history of the camelina plant

Camelina has been cultivated and its oil eaten for thousands of years. The Celts used it. The Romans used it. And then we slowly stopped growing it from the mid 1800s onwards. By the 1950s there were likely only small pockets of camelina cultivation in Europe. Why? Well, there's lots of potential factors. It's not as big and productive as oilseed rape, it's fiddly to work with as the seeds are so tiny, but maybe most interestingly it's so high in healthy unsaturated fats (like Omega 3) that it's very difficult to hydrogenate. So when hydrogenated vegetable oils really took off (before people understood the harm of the trans fats they contain), growing camelina didn't make sense. It became considered a weed! 

These days there's far wider understanding of the health benefits of getting enough, and the right balance, of unsaturated fatty acids in our diets. We're trying to give camelina the comeback it deserved, and get people eating (and growing) this nutrient-rich plant once again.

The biology of the camelina plant

Camelina has many names: Camelina sativa, gold of pleasure, false flax, leindotter, linseed dodder, German sesame... Which in a way isn't surprising, since it's been around for so long. It's a member of the Brassicaceae family, which also includes plants like broccoli and cauliflower. Some people call it the cruciferous family, which refers to the cross shape the flowers in this family typically have. 

Camelina itself is an annual, which means it completes its lifecycle in one growing season. It's a hardy plant, so can be grown as a winter or spring crop. (A winter crop usually starts life in the autumn of one year, and then is harvested the following year in the spring or summer. Spring crops are simply planted in the spring, and harvested the same year.) So far, we've only grown camelina as a spring crop, but might try it as a winter crop in the future.

Camelina has small yellow flowers, which are enjoyed by a lot of pollinators. These are followed with small tear-drop shaped seed pods, which contain several of the oil-rich seeds. There is also some suggestion that it is allelopathic, which means that it can inhibit the growth of weeds around it. We don't know if this is what's happening, but we've had very little issues with weeds in our camelina.