Leng cabbage
The Leng cabbage, sometimes known as the Arctic cabbage (Brassica arctica), is a sturdy, hardy, and highly nutritious cabbage endemic to Leng. Despite its nutrition, it is a toxic plant. When handled incorrectly (such as touching it with your skin) or cooked incorrectly, the toxins in the cabbage will remain. For most people (Lengois people have a natural immunity to it), raw or ill-cooked cabbage is a hallucinogenic drug in small quantities. In larger quantities, it can lead to brassicosis – a neurological disease associated with delusions, hallucinations (mainly visual and auditory), and impaired cognitive function. Hyperboreans have used the cabbage, in concentrated forms, as a ritual hallucinogen.
As one of the rare species of flora that flourishes in the desolate regions of the Arctic, it has sustained the indigenous people of Leng and, to a certain extent, Hyperborea, for thousands of years. Due to its nutrition and hardiness, it was imported to Benacia (Absentia, particularly) in the 1580s, and was commercialized and farmed. In the warmer climates of Absentia, the cabbage grew quickly and gave the farmers a high yield. The cabbage began being exported from Absentia from the 1590s and onwards. In 1600, after the Elwynnese reunification with Shireroth, the cabbage was introduced to Shireroth. In 1603, the cheap and highly nutritious cabbage led to an outbreak of mass-psychosis in Shirekeep (Cabbage crisis) in which some 200,000 people died.
Cultivation of Leng cabbage is near-universally banned. Due to the difficulty in differentiating Leng cabbage from other forms of cabbage, all cabbage is, since the 1603 cabbage crisis, banned in some countries (e.g., Shireroth, Hurmu).
The similar ban formerly upheld in Elwynn was lifted following the Second Elwynnese Civil War, owing to the dire nutritional situation in the nascent Benacian Union. Many forms of brassica, including Leng Cabbage that have been boiled, pickled, and fermented in sequence, have been successfully sold to the famished peasantry of Amokolia and Upper Elwynn as land kelp - which is customarily served with mashed potatoes, sautéed mushrooms and onions, and a fried gull's egg. By 1707 AN the rehabilitation of cabbage had reached the point it had begun to be assigned as part of the daily ration of cudgellers whilst full-scale industrial farming had resumed in the General Government regions of Amokolia and Upper Elwynn.
