This Week's Mystery Plant

One nice thing about being a botanist is that there is always something to talk about at the dinner table, unless you are a total carnivore. This week's edible Mystery Plant fits the bill quite nicely, and offers another slant on the wonderful sunflower family.

Of course, you will know that this is the cultivated artichoke or "globe artichoke" as it is sometimes called. Artichokes have been prized by humans as a food source since the time of the ancient Greeks, and the ancestors of the modern species are from the Mediterranean area. (The origin of name "artichoke" is a bit difficult to pin down, but most likely comes from the Italian articiocco, or possibly from the Arabic al-qarshuf.) Introduced into America in the 1800's by Italian immigrants, artichokes are now a huge crop, centered in California, and then at the city of Castroville. This town has proclaimed itself the "artichoke capital of the world," and perhaps with good reason, as most of the artichokes you see in markets come from there. As you might expect, the Castrovillians have developed their own artichoke festival; the next one takes place in May. (It turns out that in the late 1940's Marilyn Monroe broke onto the scene as Castroville's first artichoke queen. For more information, visit their web site at www.artichoke-festival.org)

An artichoke is basically the unopened flower head of a special thistle. As a member of the sunflower family, the tiny flowers are located deep inside the head (or "capitulum"), tightly surrounded by green, stiff, spiny bracts. (The blooming plants are beautiful, with several hundred tiny purple flowers arising from the opened head…but of course you have to eat these things long before the flowers are visible.) After steaming or boiling (and then cooled off), it is the bracts that are pulled off one by one, dipped in butter or lemon juice, and then the inner surface scraped across your teeth. When you get all the way to the interior of the head, the fibrous flowers are scraped away, and then the exquisite artichoke "heart" is ready to eat. Delightful stuff, but labor intensive. Something like eating a lobster. (Photo by John Nelson.)

Photo by John Nelson