Cynara cardunculus |
Asteraceae tribe Cardueae |
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artichoke, artichoke thistle, cardoon |
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Habit | Annuals or perennials (sometimes coarse and/or robust, often prickly-spiny and thistlelike [subshrubs, shrubs, or trees]; rarely dioecious, e.g., some Cirsium spp.). | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Taproots | fleshy. |
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Stems | glabrous to densely arachnoid-tomentose. |
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Leaves | basal blades 30–200 cm, margins deeply 1–2-pinnately lobed or divided to nearly compound, lobes oblong to lanceolate, entire to coarsely toothed, teeth and lobes innocuous to prominently spine-tipped, spines 1–30 mm, often clustered along petiole and at base of lobes, abaxial faces densely gray- or white-tomentose, adaxial faces thinly cobwebby-tomentose; cauline leaves often short-decurrent as spiny wings. |
basal and/or cauline; alternate; ± petiolate or sessile; (leaf bases often decurrent on stems) margins usually lobed to dissected, sometimes dentate or entire (usually spiny). |
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Involucres | often purplish tinged, 30–150 × 40–150 mm excluding spreading phyllary tips, constricted distally or not. |
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Receptacles | flat to convex, usually epaleate (often pitted and often bristly-setose or densely hairy). |
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Ray florets | 0 (corollas of peripheral florets in radiant heads often notably enlarged, usually 5-lobed, sometimes zygomorphic and raylike or ± 2-lipped). |
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Peripheral (pistillate) florets | 0 or (in disciform heads) in 1–3+ series; corollas (usually present) usually yellow, sometimes ochroleucous or cyanic. |
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Disc florets | bisexual and fertile (rarely functionally staminate); corollas yellow, cyanic, or white, usually actinomorphic, lobes 5, usually narrowly triangular to ± linear, seldom deltate (sometimes unequal, corollas then ± zygomorphic); anther bases ± tailed, apical appendages usually oblong (filaments sometimes papillate to pilose; connate in Silybum); styles (bisexual, fertile florets) distally enlarged or swollen, usually dilated and/or with rings of hairs at or near point of bifurcation, abaxially smooth or papillate to hairy (at least distally, sometimes ± throughout), “branches” often connate, adaxially continuously stigmatic ± to tips, apices rounded to acute, appendages essentially none. |
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Corollas | blue or purple (rarely white), 3–5 cm; styles long-exserted. |
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Phyllaries | lanceolate to broadly ovate, bases appressed, spreading apices obtuse to acute or acuminate, spineless or tipped with spines 1–9 mm or truncate, abruptly mucronate, and spineless or minutely spine-tipped. |
usually persistent [readily falling], in (1–)3–5+ series, usually distinct, usually unequal, usually herbaceous (sometimes fleshy), margins (entire or denticulate to pectinate, sometimes spiny) and apices seldom notably scarious (apices often spinose or ± expanded into distinct, often fimbriate-fringed, pectinate, and/or spiny appendages). |
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Calyculi | 0 (involucres sometimes closely subtended by leaflike peduncle bracts). |
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Heads | mostly homogamous (usually discoid, sometimes disciform or radiant, then peripheral florets usually pistillate or neuter, sometimes bisexual or with staminodes), borne singly or in corymbiform, paniculiform, or racemiform arrays (heads with 1 floret each aggregated into second-order heads in Echinops). |
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Cypselae | 4–8 mm; pappus bristles 2–4 cm. |
usually monomorphic within heads (often thick-walled, hard, nutlike, receptacular attachments basal or lateral, bases sometimes each with an elaiosome), usually ellipsoid, obovoid, or ovoid, sometimes rounded-prismatic, terete, 4–5-angled, or ± compressed, rarely beaked, bodies usually smooth, sometimes rugose or 10- or 20-nerved (glabrous or puberulent to villous; often with apical umbo and/or crown in addition to pappus); pappi (rarely 0) readily falling or persistent, usually of fine to coarse, barbellate to plumose bristles, sometimes of scales, sometimes both bristles and scales. |
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Cynara cardunculus |
Asteraceae tribe Cardueae |
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Distribution |
CA; Mediterranean region; Macaronesia [Introduced in North America]
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Mostly Old World; especially Mediterranean [Some species widely introduced] |
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Discussion | Subspecies 2 (2 in the flora). Cynara cardunculus is a species of considerable economic importance. The globe artichoke, formerly treated as C. scolymus, was included as a horticulturally derived form of C. cardunculus (A. Wiklund 1992). The artichoke and the cardoon, another horticultural race of C. cardunculus, have been cultivated for centuries–the former for edible phyllary bases and receptacles, and the latter for edible stems and leaf rachises. That species has a darker side, however. Wild type races (artichoke thistles) are invasive and tenacious weeds that have infested Mediterranean climate areas of California, South America, South Africa, and Australia. Wiklund recognized two subspecies of C. cardunculus: subsp. cardunculus includes the artichoke, cardoon, and various wild types; subsp. flavescens includes some of the most invasive weedy members of the species. It is not certain that all of the weedy artichoke thistles in California are members of the latter subspecies. (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
Genera 83, species 2500 (17 genera, 116 species in the flora). The circumscription for Cynareae adopted here is the traditional one and includes the three elements (Cynareae in the narrow sense, Carlineae, and Echinopeae) recognized as tribally distinct by M. Dittrich (1977[1978]). Work by K. Bremer (1987) supported the Dittrich scheme. A traditional circumscription of Cynareae was maintained by J. L. Panero and V. A. Funk (2002). (Discussion copyrighted by Flora of North America; reprinted with permission.) |
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Key |
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Source | FNA vol. 19, p. 89. | FNA vol. 19, p. 82. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Parent taxa | Asteraceae > tribe Cardueae > Cynara | Asteraceae | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Synonyms | family Asteraceae tribe Cynareae | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Name authority | Linnaeus: Sp. Pl. 2: 827. (1753) | Cassini | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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