Rutabaga!

Parsnip (who should know a thing or two about root vegetables) has introduced me to a new word for swedes. Rutabaga. It sounds exotic. I had to go to google to read all about it. What a confusion! When is a swede not a swede? When it's a turnip, or a rutabaga. While the vegetables stay the same, and taste quite different from each other, their names are interchangeable depending on which part of Britain you're in. And that's without factoring in names given in other countries.

It reminds me of the childhood joke,
how do you tell the difference between a stoat and a weasel?

Answer, A weasel is weasyily recognised, but a stoat is stoatally different.

When my swede and turnip seedlings first sprouted in the autumn I had no idea which was which. Birds had pulled out the small white labels that identified each row and I ended up planting out the thinnings as guesswork. No matter, both crops did well. How pretty the turnips look, and, satisfyingly, just the same as on the packet!