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Artichoke (Globe)
Cynara cardunculus scolymus
A large grey-green perennial thistle grown for its unopened flower buds, cut while the overlapping fleshy bracts are still tight. The fleshy base of each bract and the pad beneath the immature florets are the parts eaten, usually boiled or braised. Left uncut, the bud opens into a violet thistle flower on a stem well above head height.
Not a native or established wild plant in Britain or Ireland. Grown in kitchen gardens and allotments on deep, free-draining soil in full sun, and occasionally persisting on old garden ground and sheltered coastal sites in the milder south.
Generally safe to eat. The hairy choke and the fibrous outer bracts are discarded rather than eaten, and in some cultivars the bract tips end in a sharp spine. Handling the foliage can cause contact dermatitis in people sensitive to other daisy-family plants.
Always use more than one reference to confirm a plant. You are responsible for what you choose to forage.
Bud
A rounded to slightly conical head 6–12cm across, built of tightly overlapping fleshy bracts on a stout stalk. Squeeze it: firm and closed means it is still worth cutting, springy and gaping means the choke inside has gone fibrous.
Leaves
Very large, deeply pinnately lobed, dull green above and distinctly grey-white with felted hairs beneath, the biggest reaching a metre. Globe cultivars are near-spineless on the leaf, unlike the strongly prickly foliage of the cardoon forms grown for their stems.
Habit
A clump-forming perennial that dies back to a crown each winter and throws up thick, ribbed, greyish flowering stems 1.5–2m tall in its second and later years. First-year plants make leaves only and produce nothing to pick.
Flower
If a bud is left uncut it opens into a dense brush of violet-blue florets seated on the edible pad, followed by pappus-topped seeds. Once flowering has begun the head is inedible, so a plant in full flower is a missed harvest rather than a different plant.
Updated 2026-08-07T20:57:53.903Z · Part of the shared Foragers Log catalogue · Vegetable