La rúcula o rúgula es un tipo de hortaliza, considerado para fines culinarios un tipo de verdura de hoja. Científicamente, consta de tres especies: Eruca sativa, Diplotaxis tenuifolia y Diplotaxis muralis. Otros nombres vernáculos de dichas especies son oruga, ruqueta y jaramago. La rúcula ha sido cultivada como verdura en el Mediterráneo desde la época romana, siendo considerada un afrodisíaco. Sin embargo, no ha sido cultivada a gran escala ni sometida a investigación científica hasta los años 1990, siendo normalmente recolectada salvaje. Actualmente se cultiva en varios lugares, especialmente en Véneto, estando disponible en diferentes partes del mundo. La rúcula es especialmente usada en ensaladas, pero también cocinada como verdura con pasta o cecina. También es común en Italia su uso en pizzas, añadiéndosela sólo tras el horneado. Es rica en vitamina C y hierro. La rúcula en el Magreb verdea después de las ocasionales tormentas y es consumida en forma de sopa.

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Eruca sativa (syn. E. vesicaria subsp. sativa (Miller) Thell., Brassica eruca L.) is an edible annual plant, commonly known as salad rocket, rucola, rucoli, rugula, colewort, roquette, and arugula. It is sometimes conflated with Diplotaxis tenuifolia, known as perennial wall rocket, another plant of the Brassicaceae family that is used in the same manner. Eruca sativa, which is widely popular as a salad vegetable, is a species of Eruca native to the Mediterranean region, from Morocco and Portugal in the west to Syria, Lebanon and Turkey in the east. The Latin adjective sativa in the plant's binomial is derived from satum, the supine of the verb sero, meaning "to sow", indicating that the seeds of the plant were sown in gardens. Eruca sativa differs from E. vesicaria in having early deciduous sepals. Some botanists consider it a subspecies of Eruca vesicaria: E. vesicaria subsp. sativa. Still others do not differentiate between the two. Other common names include garden rocket, or more simply rocket (British, Australian, South African, Irish and New Zealand English), and eruca. The English common name, rocket, derives from the French roquette, a diminutive of the Latin word eruca, which designated an unspecified plant in the Brassicaceae family (probably a type of cabbage). Arugula, the common name now widespread in the United States, entered American English from non-standard (dialect) Italian. (The standard Italian word is rucola, a diminutive of the Latin "eruca"). The Oxford English Dictionary dates the first appearance of "arugula" in American English to a 1960 New York Times article by food editor and prolific cookbook writer Craig Claiborne. Eruca sativa grows 20–100 centimetres (8–39 in) in height. The leaves are deeply pinnately lobed with four to ten small lateral lobes and a large terminal lobe. The flowers are 2–4 cm (0.8–1.6 in) in diameter, arranged in a corymb in typical Brassicaceae fashion; with creamy white petals veined with purple, and with yellow stamens; the sepals are shed soon after the flower opens. The fruit is a siliqua (pod) 12–35 millimetres (0.5–1.4 in) long with an apical beak, and containing several seeds (which are edible). The species has a chromosome number of 2n = 22.

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