Globe artichoke

Photo: Jamain — CC BY-SA 3.0 · source

Survives zone 6 through 9

Harvest calendar

Ripens: Buds harvested summer through autumn, before the flower opens

Best planted in early spring after your last frost, or in fall before the ground freezes, depending on your climate.

Grown for the immature flower bud, harvested before it opens — the fleshy base of each bract and the heart at the center are eaten, steamed or boiled. A close relative of cardoon (some treatments place it as a cultivar group of Cynara cardunculus rather than a fully separate species), selected over centuries for a larger, more tender bud rather than the stalks.

Hardiness

Zone 6–9

Habit

Herb

Edible part

Flower

Ripens

Buds harvested summer through autumn, before the flower opens

Mature size

1–1.5 m tall by 1 m wide

Light

Full sun

Soil pH

6.0–7.5

Environment

Mediterranean

Native range

No wild range — a cultivar group of Cynara cardunculus, domesticated around the Mediterranean in antiquity from the wild cardoon and never found wild in its own right. It escapes from cultivation in Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Corsica and Turkey.

Status

Both wild and cultivated

Years to fruit

1 yr from a rooted sucker; longer from seed

Growth speed

Fast — a rooted sucker crops in its first season

Spacing

100 cm (39 in) apart — about 1 m² (11 sq ft) per plant

Leaf shape

Large, deeply lobed, silvery-green

Root system

A deep fleshy taproot with wide laterals, the same drought-adapted system as cardoon; the crown throws suckers around itself each year, which is how the plant is renewed and propagated.

Fruit description

Large globose flower bud, fleshy triangular bracts around an edible heart

Propagation

Division of rooted suckers (truest to type), or seed — seed-grown plants vary and are usually replaced every few years for good production.

Pollination

Insect-pollinated and self-compatible — but the whole point of the crop is to harvest the bud before it flowers at all, so pollination never enters into it.

The edible parts listed above are a starting point, not a field guide. Identify a plant with certainty — ideally against a local authority — before eating any part of it, and read the full disclaimer. Spotted something wrong? Report it.