Vegetable History

Cynara scolymus L. (Asteraceae-Compositae)

Turkish: enginar; French: artichaut; Italian: carciofo; Spanish: alchachofa; Greek: ankinara; Arabic: harshuf, qinariyya, kankar

Plant origin

The artichoke is not known in the wild and was developed from the cardoon or another thistle, Cynara syriaca Boiss., from the eastern Mediterranean by Arab or Berber horticulturists before the twelfth century.

Plant history

The central question of interest to agricultural historians is, did ancient Greeks and Romans know of the artichoke? Some mosaics in Tunisia are our iconographical evidence of what appears to be an artichoke. But this identified Cynara is believed to be a cardoon and not an artichoke. The only cardoon known in the Greek-Roman world was designated by names such as kaktos, cynara, carduus; and there is no reference in classical literature to a plant of this family with edible flesh on the bracts. Although some suggest that several Roman authors may have referred to the artichoke using the word carduus, two of the most important authors,Palladius and

Pliny say nothing that would make one think that the plant is not the cardoon. A recipe found in the Roman author Apicius's cookbook sounds as if it was meant for the soft stems of the cardoon rather than for the artichoke. Theophrastos says explicitly that the stem of the kaktosis eaten, so almost certainly he was referring to the cardoon. The Arabic word kankar designated the acanthus, a cultivated plant resmbling the wild cardoon. Abu al-Khayr (fl 11th century?) wrote of the cultivation of qinariyya in the gardens of Seville, and this plant appears to be the wild cardoon. But following him, it was said that there are two types of qinariyya, those of the fields and those of the garden, the latter appearing to be the artichoke. It is impossible to tell whether the kharshuf was used in the thirteenth-century Hispano-Muslim cookery book was an artichoke or a cardoon.

In any case, other early cookery manuscripts such as the fourteenth-century Le ménagier de Paris, the anonymous Italian Libro di cucina, and the Viandier conspicuously do not mention artichokes.

The 19th century Italian botanist Targioni-Tozzetti describes the introduction of the artichoke to Tuscany around 1466, pointing out that Mattioli said it was brought to Naples from Sicily. As far as an early European distinction between the cardoon and the artichoke, the French historian Henri Bresc cites evidence of the artichoke being grown in the gardens of Norman Sicily (1091-1194); the documents distinguish the plant from the cardoon. Ermolao Barbaro, in his In Dioscoridem corollariorum libri quinque, finally published in 1530, writes that at the end of the fifteenth century artichokes were not always available in Italy; the implication may be that they were not particularly esteemed at that time. The artichoke, he said, speaking of Venice, is found only in the foreing gardens in the Moorish quarter. The artichoke was brought to the New World by the French and Spanish colonizers in the 16th century.

Today the Mediterranean and California are the major producers of artichokes.