Artichoke

The artichoke is a variety of a species of thistle cultivated as food, its edible portion the flower buds harvested before the flowers come into bloom; the budding flower head is a cluster of many small budding flowers together with many bracts on an edible base, and once the buds open the structure becomes coarse and barely edible. Another variety of the same species is the cardoon, a perennial plant native to the Mediterranean region, and both wild and cultivated forms of the artichoke exist.