126 History of Garden Vegetables. ” PR eb, 
sirable the longer it is used. It is generally cultivated* in Ven- 
ezuela, New Granada, and Ecuador, and in the temperate regions 
of these countries it is preferred to the potato. The first account 
which reached Europe concerning this plant was published in 
the “Annals of Botany,” vol. i., about 1805. It was, however, 
mentioned in a few words by Alcedo in his “ Diccionario Geo- 
graphico de las Indias Occidentales 6 America,” 1789.” 
The synonymy has been given as below: 
Aracacha xanthoriza. Banc. Koen. Ann., i. 400. 
Conium aracacha. Hook, Exot. Fl. Bot., 152. 
Aracacha esculenta. De C., Prod., iv. 244. 
ARTICHOKE. Cynara scolymus Lin. 
The artichoke, Cynara scolymus L., is supposed by authors to 
have originated from the cardoon, Cynara cardunculus L., and 
the cardoon is indigenous at Madeira, the Canaries, Morocco, the 
Iberian Peninsula, the south of France, Italy, Greece, and the 
islands of the Mediterranean. It has become naturalized on a 
vast scale in Buenos Ayres and Chili It is now grown ona 
large scale in France and other portions of Europe for the 
flower-heads, the scales and buttons of which make a very pala- 
table vegetable, and’in America in private gardens. 
The number of varieties of artichoke is extremely large, as 
through the cross-fertilization of the flowers the plants do not 
come true from seed, and hence desirable selections are propa- 
gated by dividing the stools, or from suckers. Vilmorin + de- 
scribes thirteen varieties as sufficiently prominent for notice. 
Whether the artichoke was cultivated by the ancients is in 
dispute among commentators, and Targioni-Tozzetti,> a most 
competent authority, says it was only known to the Romans in 
the shape of the cardoon, and that the first record of the arti- 
choke cultivated for the sake of the receptacle of the flowers was 
at Naples in the beginning or the middle of the fifteenth century ; 
it was thence carried to Florence in 1466, and at Vienna, Ermo- 
lao Barbaro, who died as late as 1493, only knew of a single 
plant grown as a novelty in a private garden, although it soon 
+ De Candolle, Orig. des Pl. Cult., 32. * Don, Gard. Dict., iii. 378. 
3 De Candolle, Orig. des Pl. Cult., 73- 
-4 Vilmorin, Les Pl. Pot., 1883, 14; The Veg. Gard., 1885, 3. 
-$ Targioni-Tozzetti, Hort. Trans., 1854, 143- 
