CINARA, or CINARA, which we translate artichoke, is, according to Professor Beckmann, the name which was given by the ancients to a plant very different from the artichoke of our kitchen-gardens, though he admits that they belong to the same genus. The proofs which he adduces for the truth of his opinion are too tedious to be introduced into this Work, especially as they appear not to us to be absolutely conclusive. We must therefore refer the reader to his History of Inventions. The cinara, carduus, and scolymus (see SCOLYMUS in this Supplement), were in his opinion species of the thistle, of which the roots and young shoots, as well as the bottom of the calyx of the last, were eaten. He has proved indeed, he thinks, that the Greeks and Romans used the pulpy bottom of the calyx, and the tenderest stalks and young shoots of many plants belonging to the thistle kind, in the same manner as we use artichokes and cardoons, but that these latter were unknown to them.
"It appears probable (says he) that the use of these thistles, at least in Italy and Europe in general, was in the course of time laid aside and forgotten, and that the
artichoke, when it was first brought to Italy from the Levant, was considered as a new species of food. It is undoubtedly certain that our artichoke was first known in that country in the 15th century. Hieronimus Barbarus, who died in 1494, relates that this plant was first seen at Venice in a garden in 1473, at which time it was very scarce. About the year 1466, one of the family of Strozza brought the first artichokes to Florence from Naples. Politian, in a letter in which he describes the dishes he found at a grand entertainment in Italy in 1488, among these mentions artichokes. They were introduced into France in the beginning of the 16th century, and into England in the reign of Henry VIII."
The original country of the artichoke is unknown. Linnaeus says that it grew wild in Narbonne, Italy, and Sicily, as the cardoon did in Crete; but our author has proved very sufficiently, that with respect to both these facts the great botanist was misinformed. The artichoke is certainly known in Persia; but Tavernier says expressly, that it was carried thither, like asparagus and other European vegetables of the kitchen garden, by the Carmelite and other monks; and that it was only in later times that it became common.