ARTICHOKE

(Kharciof, the Arabic name of the plant.) A thistle-like plant, called by botanists cynara scolymus, a native of the south of Europe, and now cultivated for its " bottom," that is, for the sake of the fleshy sweet receptacle of its flowers; the harsh hairy substance that is pulled away consists both of the hairy palese of the receptacle, and of the feathery pappus of the ovaries. The dried artichokes, called by the French " culs d'artichaut," are the receptacles deprived of the choke and the spiny hard hairs of the involucre, blanched by immersion in boiling water and dried in the sun. Jerusalem artichokes are quite different; the^ are the tubers of helianthus tuberosus, and derive their name, not from the Holy City, but from a corruption of the Italian girasole, a sunflower. [s. 105]