White cabbages are predominant.
Growth of red cabbage is mainly limited to mid Europe and Holland. Head cabbages thrive on heavy, loamy soils with a regulated water supply. Cabbage varieties are biennial, and in the second year of growth the head or rosettes break up to form large flowering shoots, whose yellow inflorescences form many-seeded pods following pollination. The extraordinary polymorphism of cabbages is a result of mutations and crosses. Whilst the mutants would have been quickly eliminated in the wild, they represented an improvement in human nutrition and were purposely propagated.