In April 1898, Judge Lumley Smith of the Westminster County Court had before him two seedsmen named Hawcroft and Watkins who alleged that the Reverend Laycock of Hampshire owed them £24 for a consignment of cabbage seeds they had supplied to him the previous year. In turn, the Rev. Laycock was countersuing the seedsmen because, he said, the cabbage seeds were definitely not the variety that he had ordered.

Laycock explained that he used Hawcroft and Watkins’s cabbage seeds to plant 200 acres (80 ha) – but the plants, instead of stopping when about 18in (46cm) high, “grew on until [they were] seven feet [2.1m] above the ground”.