+Artichoke+—_Cynara scolymus_, Linnæus; _C. cardunculus_, var. _sativa_, Moris. For a long time botanists have held the opinion that the artichoke is probably a form obtained by cultivation from the wild cardoon.[380] Careful observations have lately proved this hypothesis. Moris,[381] for instance, having cultivated, in the garden at Turin, the wild Sardinian plant side by side with the artichoke, affirmed that true characteristic distinctions no longer existed. Willkomm and Lange,[382] who have carefully observed the plant in Spain, both wild and cultivated, share the same opinion. Moreover, the artichoke has not been found out of gardens; and since the Mediterranean region, the home of all the _Cynaræ_, has been thoroughly explored, it may safely be asserted that it exists nowhere wild. The cardoon, in which we must also include _C. horrida_ of Sibthorp, is indigenous in Madeira and in the Canary Isles, in the mountains of Marocco near Mogador, in the south and east of the Iberian peninsula, the south of France, of Italy, of Greece, and in the islands of the Mediterranean Sea as far as Cyprus.[383] Munby[384] does not allow _C. cardunculus_ to be wild in Algeria, but he does admit _Cynara humilis_ of Linnæus, which is considered by a few authors as a variety. The cultivated cardoon varies a good deal with regard to the division of the leaves, the number of spines, and the size—diversities which indicate long cultivation. The Romans eat the receptacle which bears the flowers, and the Italians also eat it, under the name of _girello_. Modern nations cultivate the cardoon for the fleshy part of the leaves, a custom which is not yet introduced into Greece.[385] The artichoke offers fewer varieties, which bears out the opinion that it is a form derived from the cardoon. Targioni,[386] in an excellent article upon this plant, relates that the artichoke was brought from Naples to Florence in 1466, and he proves that ancient writers, even Athenæus, were not acquainted with the artichoke, but only with the wild and cultivated cardoons. I must mention, however, as a sign of its antiquity in the north of Africa, that the Berbers have two entirely distinct names for the two plants: _addad_ for the cardoon, _taga_ for the artichoke.[387] It is believed that the _kactos_, _kinara_, and _scolimos_ of the Greeks, and the _carduus_ of Roman horticulturists, were _Cynara cardunculus_,[388] although the most detailed description, that of Theophrastus, is sufficiently confused. “The plant,” he said, “grows in Sicily”—as it does to this day—“and,” he added, “not in Greece.” It is, therefore, possible that the plants observed in our day in that country may have been naturalized from cultivation. According to Athenæus,[389] the Egyptian king Ptolemy Energetes, of the second century before Christ, had found in Libya a great quantity of wild _kinara_, by which his soldiers had profited.