Brassica oleracea is the great-grandpa of such vegetables as cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, and more. The uncultivated form is called wild cabbage and it gives us a pretty good idea on how what we now know as a cabbage looked like thousands of years ago before it was started to be cultivated. The history of the domesticated plant is unknown before Greek and Roman times, but scholars of that age have left plenty of records to confirm that it was a well-established garden vegetable back then. You can still spot the wild cabbage growing near limestone sea cliffs as it has high tolerance for salt and lime.