Exotic, dramatic, delicious
“What’n the sam blazes is that?” a friend says upon seeing the fist-sized, violet-blue flowers in the garden. “A cartoon? Honey, look, they’ve got a plant called cartoon.”
You chuckle and enunciate, “Car-doon.”
“Is that right?” the friend says. “Looks to me like an artichoke on ‘roids.”
True, the cardoon does resemble an artichoke, much in the same way that I resemble Shaquille O’Neal. The cardoon and artichoke are from the same species of plants, but the artichoke is midsized, whereas the cardoon is hangar-sized. The artichoke has a handful of strikingly beautiful flowers; the cardoon has dozens. Bigger and taller than most other plants in the garden, the cardoon simply demands your attention.
When planning a garden, landscape designers are taught to focus on the bones. Developing a definitive structure within a new space allows the gardener significantly more freedom to experiment with untested plants or novel combinations of plantings. With good bones, a gardener can completely mess up little corners and be confident that the overall design will remain dazzling.
For strength and stature, the cardoon is about as bones-y as one can get. Against a brick wall or a hedge of eugenia, the 9- to 10-foot-tall stalks, thickly ribbed like a pair of pale-green corduroy pants, possess a skeletal quality.
The saw-toothed leaves, 3 to 4 feet long from stem to tip, drape from the stalks like a gypsy’s skirt, arching and falling in a manner that is exuberant and graceful. A cardoon creates the illusion of a fountain spraying high above the other plants below.
So statuesque is the cardoon that it carries much of the weight in one of the world’s most famous gardens, the White Garden at Sissinghurst Castle in Kent, England. There, above a panoply of white flowers and gray foliage, towers the cardoon. It’s quite a lordly position for a plain-old rascally thistle.
“Let me tell you, they are beautiful,” extols Jan Smithen, author of the wonderful “Sun Drenched Gardens: The Mediterranean Style.” “And I sure saw a lot of them in Provence, because there they were being grown commercially.”
Yes, cardoons are edible and have been a staple around the Mediterranean Sea for thousands of years. Whereas the flower of the artichoke is what’s considered edible, the cardoon’s ribbed stems and inner leafstalks are what get served.
Few contemporary Americans have tasted cardoon, whose flavor is similar to artichoke yet still unique. Those stern and sober Quakers apparently loved the heck out of them, because in early times the cardoon was imported to Eastern shores and put to use by wise foremothers.
Capable of growing in most soil conditions, self-seeding prolifically, long-lived and able to withstand drought, the cardoon was used as food, as an herbal medicine and as fodder for livestock.
In fact, the plant can be used in its entirety. “The leaves make a wonderful compost with a high nitrogen content,” says Katarina Eriksson, head gardener of the perennial gardens at the Huntington Botanical Gardens in San Marino. “In some places, like Russia, they use it as a fuel. The dried stalks are used for kindling. The dried flowers can be used as a rennet for making cheese.”
And for Southern Californians? “Incredibly showy, great for summertime blooms,” Eriksson says cheerfully.
The flowers are absolutely weird -- glossy, fat and spiny orbs topped by violet-colored buzz cuts. To an imaginative eye, the flowers look like an alien invasion, retro-rockets blasting off for touchdown, or perhaps a meteor shower with tails the color of jacaranda blooms.
Climb a ladder and gaze down into the flower, and you’re reminded of a sea anemone. My plant is ornamented by 41 fist-sized buds, each an elegant universe unto itself.
But, alas, there is a catch. You will have to cut the flowers, perhaps to make a table centerpiece, as Eriksson does. Or dry them for use in holiday wreaths. Or cut the blooms and arrange a bouquet with sunflowers, a sister plant.
You’ll have to do something with the flowers because if you let them go to seed, they will sprout all over your neighborhood and your neighborhood’s neighborhood.
In climates wetter than ours, the cardoon is designated as a noxious weed. In Northern California, the seeds are carried on breezes into the steep foothills where they flourish, overtake weaker natives and become difficult to eradicate.
Because of our dry heat, cardoon is not as invasive here. Still, snip off the flowers, please.
“Be responsible for the plant,” Eriksson says. A cardoon is like a Chihuahua with a bent for pant legs -- it’s best to keep a leash on it.
Finding cardoon to plant might be challenging. Seed catalogs offer a few good varieties. Mom-and-pop nurseries will happily special-order cardoon for you if transplants are available, usually in the fall and early spring. Making friends with a curator of a botanical garden would help. Moving to Provence would increase your chances tenfold.
No matter how you come by your giant thistle, just know that one summer morning in the future you’ll find yourself sounding like Bugs Bunny when you shout out gleefully, “Oh brother. What a cardoon!”
Tony Kienitz is the author of “The Year I Ate My Yard.” He can be reached at home@latimes.com.
