Plant Story--Artichoke, Cynara cardunculus, Edible Thistle

You do know that the artichoke is the immature flower head of a thistle, don't you? It is a strange vegetable, with layers of leaves you tear off to eat a bit of "meat" at the base, but that doesn't make most people think of thistles. Nevertheless, the artichoke, Cynara cardunculus, sunflower family Asteraceae, is the cultivated version of a big thistle from around the Mediterranean, the wild ones called cardoons or artichoke thistles.

artichoke (Cynara cardunculus) in grocery store

Artichokes have been eaten in southern Europe since at least ancient Greece. When and how they were domesticated is unclear. Artichokes have certainly become less spiny (prickly technically) and the edible flower buds bigger, but it is hard to tell from the historical and archaeological record when the transition from wild thistle to artichoke-the-vegetable occurred. Genetic evidence suggests about 2,000 years ago. Since then, better varieties have be created and have replaced older ones. In 1614, Giacomo Castelvetro wrote for the English, The Fruit, Herbs and Vegetables of Italy (somewhat pointedly suggesting improvements to English cuisine). He lovingly described eating artichokes raw or boiled. "In Italy our artichoke season is in the spring, unlike England, where you care fortunate enough to have them all year round." (p. 55). He recommended artichokes with cheese "Some people do not eat artichokes with cheese; they either dislike cheese, or it gives them catarrh, or they are simply unaware of how it improves the flavour." (p. 55). He recommended eating quite small buds raw and larger ones baked or fried or roasted, with oysters or melted butter, or bitter orange juice, or...he goes on for 10 paragraphs, much longer than most other vegetables he discusses, such as broad beans, peas, and spinach.

Today this is an impressive plant, standing easily 6 feet high with buds bigger than my fist. And with only a single prickle at the top of each bract. 

(Not really buds, because they contain the buds for lots of small flowers. Properly immature inflorescence or capitula or head.)

bud of artichoke, Cynara cardunculus

You will see artichokes' scientific name given as Cynara scolymus. That was the name when the cultivated plant was considered a different species from the wild artichoke thistle Cynara cardunculus. DNA studies have shown that they are the same species, the crop derived from the wild plant less than 2000 years ago. They are still the identical except for a few useful traits like size and reduced spininess. You can say Cynara cardunculus var. scolymus for the cultivated plant to distinguish them. A second domesticated line of Cynara cardunculus is the vegetable cardoon, grown for its edible leaf stems; it was domesticated within the last 1000 years. Several of the recent sources I consulted use Cynara scolymus for artichoke, so apparently a portion of the botanical community continues to distinguish artichokes as a species separate from artichoke thistles. 

Cynara is from the Greek kyon, meaning dog, apparently because the big bracts of the artichoke thistle bud looked like dog's teeth. Kynara or cynara was the name used for both artichoke thistles and artichokes in Greece and Rome and so Linnaeus made it the genus name. The species epithet cardunculus means "resembling a small thistle." Scolymus, the older species epithet, was the name Romans used for Spanish oyster-plant, a small spiny yellow-flowered plant of the Mediterranean-region, and is currently the scientific name of the genus of Spanish oyster-plants, also called golden thistles. In ancient Greek it meant spiny. 

Artichokes are also called globe artichokes and French artichokes. They are not the same as Jerusalem artichokes, Helianthus tuberosus, a perennial sunflower with edible root-tubers. 

Although artichokes were eaten in classical Greece and Rome, they apparently lost favor in the Middle Ages so that Europeans rediscovered them in the Renaissance, making a big deal of this new vegetable. Many paintings from the 1600s portray artichokes in still lifes and banquets. Some time after that it suffered another decline in parts of Europe, so that in England it was discovered, again, in the 1960s, having been a popular vegetable in southern Europe for centuries. In the United States it had a similar fate, well known to southern Europeans, Italians especially, but unfamiliar to people of German or British heritage. In the United States they are mainly grown in California. In the 1920s to 1935, organized crime in "Artichoke Wars" intimidated and then controlled artichoke production, so that they had a monopoly on distribution, especially to the big markets of the East Coast. In 1935 New York mayor La Guardia stopped the distribution of artichokes and broke the monopoly. Better transportation has helped the artichoke industry, getting artichokes across the U.S. in ever-better condition.

young artichoke

Artichokes are perennials, although hard frosts will kill them. They have historically been grown from offshoots, side shoots from the main plant that form in the second or third year. Artichoke seeds generally produce very diverse seedlings, not necessarily replicating the characteristics of the parent. Researchers are working on this, because seed-grown artichokes could be machine-planted and machine-harvested as annuals, allowing much greater production of this vegetable. Where they are offered for sale as seeds, the sellers have carefully chosen an artichoke line that breeds nearly true. 

For most people, whatever you eat after a bit of artichoke tastes sweet. Artichokes contain salts of chlorogenic acid and cynarin. These block the cells in your tongue that detect sugars. As a result, foods eaten after artichokes taste sweet or sweeter than usual as you notice the return of the ability to taste sweet things. This effect makes pairing artichokes with other foods complicated for the host, but I just enjoy the the effect. Even plain water tastes sweet. 

Cynarin reportedly increases bile production in the liver, helping clear the body of cholesterol. It has been touted as an aphrodesic and an overall tonic. Artichokes have an array of health benefits (link). Eaten in the spring after a winter of few vegetables, they would have been good choices of food. I probably reduce the health benefits when I dip the bracts in melted butter. Mostly I've boiled artichokes or eaten them as preserved artichoke hearts, but there are many more options. See, for example: Cooking and eating artichokes link. 

artichoke flowers

The artichoke is a curious vegetable; who would have thought to eat thistle buds? But they are tasty and healthy. 

The internet offers these artichoke quotes:

"The artichoke above all is the vegetable expression of civilised living, of the long view, of increasing delight by anticipation and crescendo. No wonder it was once regarded as an aphrodisiac. It had no place in the troll's world of instant gratification. It makes no appeal to the meat-and-two-veg mentality." - Jane Grigson

"My career is like an artichoke. People might think that the leaves are tasty and buttered up and delicious, and they don't even know that there's something magical hidden at the base of it. There's a whole other side of me that people didn't know existed."- Katy Perry

"A woman is like an artichoke, you must work hard to get to her heart." - Inspector Jacques Clouseau in The Pink Panther (2006)

"Life is like eating artichokes; you have to go through so much to get so little." -Tad Dorgan

"Artichoke: that vegetable of which one has more at the finish than at the start of dinner." -Lord Chester

Comments and corrections welcome.

References

Artichoke. A-Z Quotes link (Accessed 11/4/24)

Bartoshuk, L.M., C.-H. Lee, and R. Scappelino. 1972. Sweet taste of water induced by artichoke (Cynara scolymus). Science 178:988-990.

(Cynara lymu

Castelvetro, G.  1989. translated by G. Riley. The Fruit, Herbs and Vegetables of Italy. originally 1614. Viking Press. London.

Cleveland Clinic. Health benefits of artichokes. link (Accessed 11/4/24)

Denker, J. S. 2015. The Carrot Purple. Rowman and Littlefield. New York. 

Heart Health. 2018. Vegetable of the month: artichoke. Harvard Health Publishing. link (Accessed 11/3/24)

National Geographic. 2008. Edible. An Illustrated Guide to the World's Food Plants. National Geographic Society, New York. 

Sonnante, G., D. Pignone and K. Hammer. 2007. The domestication of artichoke and cardoon: from Roman times to the genomic age. Annals of Botany. 100: 1095-110. 

Botanically prickles form from surface tissues the dermis, thorns from stem tissue and spines are structures from leaf tissues. Botanists try to keep the terms sorted out, since if you know the system, you get different information from the different names, but popular usage uses them pretty much interchangeably. 

Kathy Keeler

A Wandering Botanist

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