What was this yellow flowering plant in the fields outside Paris?

May 27, 2015 8:16 AM

I flew into Charles de Gaulle Airport in May. On our descent we passed over many fields of vivid yellow flowering plants. What might those have been?
posted by komara to Home & Garden (14 answers total)

Best answer: Almost certainly rapeseed.
posted by rtha at 8:19 AM on May 27, 2015 [7 favorites]

Response by poster: Ah. I had just started to settle for canola but the rapeseed has far thicker amount of flowers.
posted by komara at 8:24 AM on May 27, 2015

Response by poster: Also, found this quote: "The major agricultural products that place France among the top producers in the world market are sugar beets, wine, milk, beef and veal, cereals, and oilseeds" which would back up the idea that it's rapeseed, so I'm considering this resolved - done in one. Thank you.
posted by komara at 8:25 AM on May 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

I thought Canola was a. Contraction of "Canada oil" used in place of "rapeseed oil" due to the unpleasant name of the second. Am I wrong?
posted by leafwoman at 8:40 AM on May 27, 2015 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: I learn something every day. You're right - canola is a specific rapeseed cultivar. A Google image search for 'canola flowers' versus 'rapeseed flowers' left me convinced that they were separate, but I was clearly massaging results to match expectations.
posted by komara at 8:58 AM on May 27, 2015

Canola is the name of a specific variety of rape, I believe originally trademarked, which has become generalized due to the negative associations of the plant's traditional name. It is either known as rape or rapeseed in the UK, never Canola, due to a different variety being grown.
posted by Thing at 9:00 AM on May 27, 2015

Yes, it's rapeseed. You ride through lots of the fields on the Paris-Lyon/Avignon TGV line as well.

Nthing that it's called canola in the US/Canada but farmers do still call it rapeseed. Source: family with canola fields (that are actually rapeseed, since they actively chose not to use the trademarked cultivar) on both sides of the NoDak/Manitoba border. How's that for a small world, eh.
posted by fraula at 9:39 AM on May 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

Additionally: rapeseed is colza in French.

Video of a flight over the Paris region, near Chartres.
posted by fraula at 9:53 AM on May 27, 2015

Natural rapeseed oil is toxic, containing up to 54% erucic acid, which can damage heart muscles. In order to make it safe for consumption, it has to be processed rather heavily.

Canola is a variety of rapeseed which produces oil containing very little erucic acid. It is safe for consumption without any processing.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 10:39 AM on May 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

Canola, as mentioned above, is a specific cultivar of rape developed to remove a common poison in the oil. All canola is rapeseed, not all rapeseed is canola. I can't find exact figures, but my impression is that canola is close to completely replacing native rapeseed entirely in the EU. It certainly has in most other parts of the world, where "canola oil" is completely replacing "rapeseed oil".

The are social concerns that complicate market adoption. Canola was developed by conventional breeding, but much of the current seed (in NA at least) has been made "Roundup ready", herbicide tolerant by GMO techniques. I don't think the EU allows the GMO varieties, however the impression that all canola is a GMO lasts in many circles.

However, it is very common and really important for GHG reduction targets, particularly in the EU. It makes up about half of the plant oil production in the EU (and France) and as least haf of the canola production is used for biodiesel to supplement petrodiesel and reduce net carbon dioxide emissions.
posted by bonehead at 10:41 AM on May 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

Indeed, at least in France, GMO cultivation (but not all imports) are outlawed.

GMO canola is not among the authorized GMO crops in the EU.

And so apparently I'm a bit mixed up, family might have been saying they use non-GMO canola rather than rapeseed. That said, they did go into how it complicated things for them, though I don't recall details of what the complications were.
posted by fraula at 12:11 PM on May 27, 2015

It's a real mess. Non-GMO canola hybridizes very easily with the GMO stuff and it isn't always obvious that it's happened just from looking at the plant. This makes, in some people's eyes, even non GMO canola suspicious as it could be GMO and it might be hard to tell. It doesn't help that the big agricomapies have sued people for this either (and won).
posted by bonehead at 1:26 PM on May 27, 2015 [1 favorite]

The EU has gone heavily into the idea of using rapeseed oil to produce "biodiesel", and in that case the poisonous erucic acid doesn't matter since it isn't being consumed. If that field was rapeseed (rather than canola) then it was probably producing biofuel.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 1:53 PM on May 27, 2015

I think the plant itself is just called rape, rapeseed is its product. Somwhere in the dark recesses of my mind is a Sting lyric - probably from Dream of tye Blue Turtles - about "walking through fields of rape." When I was in England I was told it was rape - it's really intense and beautiful.
posted by bendy at 7:24 PM on May 27, 2015