Is this a cardoon and can I eat it?

Hello all,

The picture below is of a plant in my garden which reliably pops up every year. It has masses of fleshy leaves which I often remove from underneath when they get too droopy. It also throws up between 4 to 8 flower stems with what look like large purple thistles. The flower heads are pretty spiky and I usually leave them on the plant all through the winter when the leaves die back to nothing, because they look really attractive when the frost covers them.

My question is 2-fold. Is this actually a cardoon plant and can I eat the flower-heads before they flower? Googling tells me yes, but I'd like some advice from real people before I poison the whole family!

Many thanks :D

 

The leaves don't look like the leaves of the cardoons I grew last year. They were spikier around the edge. There was also a blue tinge to the leaves.

 

Cardoon Flower if this is any help TrekNature | Cardoon flower Photo

 

This is a picture of the flowerhead which I took last year



Liz - they do have a bluish tinge in certain lights
Terrier - Thanks for the link, it looks pretty similar I think?
Shiney - I like this idea

 

My answer is rather tangential I'm afraid!

If you want to eat Globe Artichokes (or anything else for that matter) buy the best quality plants so you have good produce to enjoy. Spending months raising a plant that, for example, grew from a pip taken out of a fruit bought from a supermarket and was of uncertain parentage seems to me to be months of effort for an uncertain result.

If you want to make an experiment fine! but only do that if you also have some "known good" plants as well, so you have a crop that is pretty much guaranteed to provide a cracking good meal (apologies to Grommit!)

 

Definitely Cardoon - Cynara Cardunculus. We had a magnificent specimen in the garden we just left, that I'd used at Chelsea, and luckily I've got a another one to transplant in our new garden.

About eating, Jekka McVicar says: "The blanched leaves and stalks are used chiefly as a winter (?) vegetable. To prepare, remove the tough outer ribs, cut the inner blanced ribs into 8cm slices and soak in water that has either the juice of a lemon squeezed inot it or a couple of tablespoons of white wine vinegar; this prevents the lovely creamy white stems browning.

After soaking for 20 minutes, the prepared ribs can then be either eaten raw, braised, boiled or baked depending on your recipe. Personally, I love eating them raw with an olive oil, garlic and anchovy dip. This is called bagna cauda in Italy.

The flower buds are occasionally eaten but I consider them to be inferior to the globe artichoke (Cynara scolymus)."

Personally, I'm not sure about them being a winter vegetable as they are at there best in the summer.

Chris

 

This is what I meant about the leaf being more spikey:
How to Clean Cardoons - Preparing Cardoons for Use in Recipes
UT Gardens' Plant of the Month

Mine were only growing for the year; maybe as they grow older the spikiness goes...

I grew mine as a veg, though after blanching them all and cooking one, they went in the compost!

 

We got a Cardoon a while ago, I think it may have to be moved now....judging on the size of that!! Can I expect that from just one plant? Or do you have several there clustered together?

Thanks.