Brassica oleracea
Broccoli - Pliny the Elder, Roman Cookbooks, Catherine de' Medici and a Linnæan Rift: Brassica oleracea, It's An Italian Thing
My gardens are not intended for food production… or flower production… or any kind of production. My gardens are a vacation getaway. For me, a trip into a garden (mine or anyone's) is a journey around the world and through time. I've written about this before in an essay I called The Language of the Dirt, so I won't belabor the point. Instead, I'm thinking about a little vacation I've been taking this summer to Ancient Rome, Renaissance France and not so ancient halls of academic debate. My vacation just happened to be in spectacular bloom throughout the fall. I am, of course, talking about my broccoli.
Late September
I don't eat broccoli, I grow it. When it sets it's "fruit" (which isn't fruit at all) I let it go and allow the heads to bloom. Each nub becomes a stalk of yellow flowers. And each head has hundreds of nubs! Broccoli in bloom is a beautiful thing. And it sets new heads again, and again and again. I love broccoli in my garden. And I also enjoy thinking about it's long and storied history. Broccoli is, to me, a particularly exciting time travel machine which I can use to visit a remarkably interesting variety of places and times.
Truly.
The history of broccoli is remarkable.
| Linnæan Classification | Some Family Confusion | Just call 'em Cole | How 'bout the Broccoli Already? | Who Are We Anyway? | Pliny and the Gang | Broccoli and the Apicius | Broccoli Takes Over The Old World | Broccoli Sneaks Into The New World | But What's So Confusing About All This? |
before I shot. But I didn't.
This story begins where many of my journeys begin… with Carolus Linnæus … as though I could get through one single day without a thought of him.
Why do I think so often of Carl?1 Maybe it is because I think in categories. (Maybe most of us do? I don't know.) Personally, I need to know what something is in relation to other things. I know some people (I'm thinking particularly of a couple of women) whose minds seem more fluid. It is very interesting to "listen to them think." I get envious when I see their conclusions. I'm afraid I'm a little more rigid. To me, an idea is defined by its boundaries… and its boundaries are defined by OTHER ideas. I need to know what ideas are next door. That's exactly what Linnæus did… as well as he could… for the entire natural world. Suffice it to say that Linnæus set forth a system of the world and then named everything within that system. Wow. This is no easy task. In fact, we are still dickering about many of these classifications today! It is sometimes difficult achieve a useful level of precision. This is particularly true with broccoli.
The third Earl of Russell was spot on when he wrote: "Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise." Way to go Bertrand old boy!
At the foundation of my thinking is one question and one question only: What the hell is broccoli? Exactly!
That is precisely the question. And it's hard to answer. And that takes us back to Linnæus.
-
The Linnæan scheme is essentially a way of classifying things. At the core of the Linnæan scheme are three levels of classification: Kingdoms (Plant, Animal, etc), Genera/genus, and species, etc. Each of these levels of classification is a "taxon." (Therefore, the study of this classification is "taxonomy.") Each of these taxons also has a rank and can be ordered within a hierarchy.
For example: Kingdom (the plant kingdom) is a broader category (taxon) than, say, species. Therefore kingdom has a higher rank.
Today we use a much more complex scheme than Carolus Linnæus put forth… but it works the same way: taxons and rank.
Tangent: On my list of issues to explore is the whole ONGOING debate as to how to divide and organize the living things on earth. It is by no means clear. When I graduated from high school in 1985, we were taught in biology class that there are five kingdoms: Plantae (mostly multicellular autotrophs), Animalia (multicellular heterotrophs), Protista and Monera, (unicellular and simple cellular colonies), and the Fungi (multicellular saprotrophs).
I had no clue that this fundamental five-kingdom system was up for discussion… and it is… believe me. There are ongoing and fascinating debates raging now: Kingdoms, Empires, on and on. Take a look at this wiki entry on kingdoms to get an idea. Turns out that the five-kingdom system was proposed by Robert Whittaker in 1969 to make a place for the fungi, which he believed deserved their own kingdom… which, to put this in perspective, was during my lifetime… and now it is being debunked. In other words, I'm old enough now that the biology I learned in school is wrong. I'll dive into this topic some day but the point is simply that we don't know… and what Linnæus did is so completely impressive that I can't get my mind around it.
Anyway… the ranking hierarchy I was taught was:
In the list above "Species" more 'specific' than "Kingdom." (This is a bit like saying "The orange is more orange than a plum.")
Anything below the species level is, what I consider to be, essentially a Tomato... if one is classifying tomatoes. More on that later.
The mnemonic device I learned was "King Philip Came Over From Great Spain." Except it doesn't work for plants does it? …and now I'm becoming suspicious that I received a fairly crappy education. Please don't tell my dad. He's a scholarly dude who has a particularly fine education and this revelation about his youngest son would break his heart (as if he doesn't already know).
(In the animal scheme, the taxon at the 'Division' level is called 'Phylum' and so the mnemonic works fine. To save my mnemonic device for plants, I looked for a Spanish King with a "D" name. No luck. I'd hoped that by digging deep I could find some obscure name, but no.
Even the current Spanish King has no "D" names… and this guy has a bunch of names: Juan Carlos I, King of Spain was baptized as Juan Carlos Alfonso Víctor María de Borbón y Borbón-Dos Sicilias.)
Eight names.
No "D."
And two names are the same.
What is up with that?
(I don't think the "de" counts as a name.)
Anyway, Linnæus used a [similar] system whereby at the most specific levels, every organism would be assigned a genus and an epithet - usually a species but not always (hybrids for example are a cross between species and are designated with an appropriate epithet). The short-hand is the Genus-epithet.
So what does all this have to do with the broccoli? EVERYTHING! You'll see.
Broccoli is Brassica oleracea.
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Perhaps interestingly, the term ' Brassicaceae' (the family name) is not from Linnæus. He named the family 'Cruciferae' (cross bearing) due to the fact that these plants often have four petals, which can look like crosses. The family was so named for some time. In fact, when I was in school we still used the term "crucifers" to describe members of this family but I am not certain if the actual family name had been changed at this time. I don't know when the name change happened.2 According to the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature ( ICBN ) (Art. 18.5 St Louis Code)3 'Cruciferae' is validly published and thus an accepted alternate name.
Who came up with the Linnæus-contradicting term Brassicaceae? Another interesting guy: Antoine Laurent de Jussieu (1748-1836). Jussieu was a notable French botanist from a family of notable French botanists. (Check out this page of Jussieu family bios - whoa. This is a family that encouraged it's kids to do their homework!)
What's interesting is that Antoine Laurent's uncle, also named Antoine de Jussieu (1686 -1758), was a physician who used a certain kind of bark (quassia bark - Cortex Simarubæ) in his practice. He wrote an account of the bark in the "Mémoires" of the French Academy of Science, which Linnæus obviously read because in 1729 Linnæus named the plant Simaruba Jussiæi in his honor (Antoine the elder's honor). (I don't know if Simaruba Jussiæi is the same plant about which Antoine wrote or another different species simply named as an honorific.)
Fast-forward one generation.
Antoine's nephew, Antoine Laurent, was a vigorous opponent of Linnæus on the principles of classification. Not that things shouldn't be classified, just that they should be classified in different ways.
No sooner had Linnæus begun to classify the world around him, than did the world begin to argue about his classifications. That seems about right.
Antoine Laurent Jussieu argued (along with the Swiss Augustin-Pyramus de Candolle) for a "natural system" that made use of morphological characters from all parts of the plant instead of just the reproductive organs.
Prior to him, Linnæus classified plants into families based on the number of stamens and pistils. This put many "unrelated" plants together and split some "related" plants apart. Jussieu classified plants based on a different system that looked at all parts of the plant (not just reproductive parts). [I use quotes on the terms "related" because we are still arguing about what is related to what... and how.]
Like Linnæus, Jussieu's put out his own Genera Plantarum in 1789.4 It was highly regarded and he was actively involved in French science for decades.
And here's the thing: Jussieu was probably right.
Many of the botanical FAMILIES today are Jussieuvian (I think I just made up that word) and not Linnæan… so you can easily find a Linnæan species name in a Jussieuvian family. This is the case with Broccoli.
Brassica oleracea (Genus species) is Linnæan.
It was originally listed in the Family of 'Cruciferae' - which was also Linnæan… but that's defunct.
The Family 'Brassicaceae' - the current name - is Jussieuvian.
These days you'll see botanical names annotated with italics "L" (to indicate Linnæus) or italics "Juss" (to indicate Jussieu). There are other annotations too.
The point? The broccoli family of plants has always been a source of confusion. (And it is remains so today.. just wait until you see this mess.)
Brassica? Cruciforms? Just Call 'Em "Cole"
All that Latin mumbo-jumbo might be getting you down. Don't fret. The simplest way to refer to (agricultural) plants in the Brassicaceae (Cabbage) family is to call them cole crops or cole plants. The German word Kohl comes from the same root. Cole crops. Stem crops.
Everywhere I look I see the same thing written: "The word cole comes from the Latin word caulis for stem." Except this is not true. In fact, the opposite is true. Think about that a minute... history upside down. This might be my next essay.
Anyway... cole crops... coleslaw.
"The word “cole slaw” comes from the Dutch koolsla, which means "cabbage salad." The name for the salad doesn't give a clue about what, besides cabbage, goes into cole slaw… it can have just about anything else in it, as long as it has shredded cabbage. [i]
These plants have also been called "coleworts" too.
The entry in The Diary of Samuel Pepys from Sunday 10 March 1660/61, Pepys wrote:
"(Lord’s day). Heard Mr. Mills in the morning, a good sermon. Dined at home on a poor Lenten dinner of COLEWORTS and bacon. In the afternoon again to church, and there heard one Castle [John Castle], whom I knew of my year at Cambridge. He made a dull sermon. After sermon came my uncle and aunt to see us, and we sat together a great while. Then to reading and at night to bed."
Broccoli is a cole crop. It may be a colewort.
"The family contains species of great economic importance, providing much of the world's winter vegetables. These include cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, collards, and kale, Chinese kale, rutabaga (also known as Swedish turnips or swedes), sea kale, turnip, radish and kohl rabi. Other well known members of the Brassicaceae include rapeseed (canola and others), mustard, horseradish, wasabi and watercress." [ii]
One particularly interesting fact about this group of plants is that one of them is a model organism, the Arabidopsis thaliana." [iii]
Arabidopsis thaliana, commonly called arabidopsis, is the thale cress or mouse-ear cress. It is one of the plants used for studying plant sciences, including genetics and plant development. It plays the role for agricultural sciences that the mouse and fruit fly (Drosophila) play in zoology.[iv]
Since Arabidopsis thaliana has little direct significance for agriculture, it can't really be called a cole crop, but it is a cole family member. It has several advantages that made it the model for understanding the genetic, cellular, and molecular biology of flowering plants.
I find it fascinating that a plant family can produce a "quintessential plant model" and something as utterly confusing as broccoli. This is why it is a joy to go outside sometimes.
How 'bout the broccoli already?
Anyway, we are six pages in and I still haven't gotten down to the broccoli yet. I'm trying. It is confusing.
Broccoli is the common name. Slang. Very old slang. It comes from the Latin brachium and Italian brocco meaning "arm" or "branch." Latin slang. Roman slang.
And that's about all we know for sure about the ancient origins of broccoli. Truly.
We know that broccoli is Italian. Sort of. It isn't from Italy. But it is Italian.
How can this be? It begs the question: What is an Italian? I ask this rhetorical question because there is some reporting that ancient Etruscans cultivated broccoli before they lived in Etruria (what we call Tuscany). We are going WAY back now… back to a time when Ancient Rome would be a thousand years or more in the future. Bronze age… before the battle of Troy… when the Etruscans lived in what would later be called Lydia (and still later called Turkey), adjacent to Troas (the area of Troy). In other words, back when Italians were Turkish, they probably grew and ate broccoli. When they moved to Italy, they brought their broccoli with them.
My point is that these people, who would become Italian, already had a culture... and this culture was durable enough to withstand several Millennia of significant and traumatic change and still remain, in at least one way (almost certainly many more) authentic. Think about this. It staggers the imagination. There are not that many peoples on earth where this is true through such cataclysmic change - though I can think of one other group of people quite readily.
The Italians were devoted to their broccoli. Maybe it was broccoli. Or maybe something like broccoli. We don't know.
Broccoli, or something like it, has been part of this culture for so long that it is hard to tell where it came from. Romans were Greeks. Etruscans were Turks. (Or so some legends say.)
Way back.
I found an interesting post about some mitochondrial DNA study, Etruscans: A Population-Genetic Study, dealing with Etruscans, Romans, Italians, Turks, North Africans, West Asians and so forth. I don't know enough about this to say if the study is valid or not (the samples seem small). But the idea is interesting. What makes us... us? And how do we figure out which of us grew the broccoli anyway? Plus... I think I want to be Italian. Those guys get the ladies. How do I know I'm not?
Who Are We Anyway?
Many years ago, before I married and settled down, I had the good fortune to travel to South America on some half-baked but very exciting business idea I cooked up. In the end, the trip was just sink-hole for my savings... it resulted in nothing tangible. But I'd rather think of it, in retrospect, as a vacation. People blow money on vacations all the time right? Not stupidity. A vacation. Anyway, I needed to go down into the Western Amazon Basin and talk to a guy who spoke no English - or more accurately, who did not want to speak English with me. I flew into Quito, Ecuador - a city very high in the Andes (high above the jungle diseases) and hired a guide / bodyguard / translator (and a kick-ass truck) to take me down the mountain and, ideally, help me not get killed by Columbian (rebels or police) (if I ventured too far north) or Indigenous "Indians" (if I ventured too far south). White people are not really welcome where I went... and get killed all the time when they venture into Indian lands. There is nothing that can be done about this as the geography is extraordinarily remote. The policy seems to be "If we can't control it, let's just call it a National Park (Parques Nacionales) and stay the hell away." See map. (I was not particularly aware of danger at the time - or if I was, I don't recall caring much. Funny.)
This part of the world is particularly interesting to me because it's history is divided into three VERY DISTINCT periods, the oldest of which is quite recent: Prehistoric, Inca and Post-Spanish Conquest. The Incas consolidated their empire in this area only sixty or seventy years before the Spaniards arrived and consolidated their own power. This isn't very long. A lifetime maybe. Consider this.
Prehistory is BEFORE THERE WAS HISTORY. And I need history to know where I am. Therefore, prehistory is, to me, a vast and foreboding time. It is forever. It is all that is unknowable. It is darkness that can never be illuminated. Time, in prehistory, is measured inside rocks. The notion of prehistory makes me shiver. Prehistory is when Italians started growing broccoli. Prehistoric Amazonia is where I went.
Now consider that the Spaniards wiped out the Incas almost immediately after the Incas got there. This means that the gap from prehistoric darkness and mystery to modern, rigidly accounted-for times is a single lifetime. There is no tunicated story describing how South Americans became Modern South Americans. It was abrupt. I believe this has an effect on a people's outlook.
My guide spoke incessantly about the Spanish and the Indians. Curiously, he'd ever-so-often throw the word Mestizo into the mix. Mestizo = Mixed Blood = both Spanish and Indian. My guide told me that he was Mestizo. But he spoke in terms of "us" and "them" and looked at me knowingly. I couldn't follow his deeper meanings... his connotative messages. Finally, I asked, in what I've learned to be my typically blunt way,"Which are you? Who is us? Who are the bad guys here?"
Please note that this is not such a good question for a person of European descent to ask of a heavily armed Mestizo gentleman in truck 1000 miles from anywhere. The Europeans are the bad guys of course. Me. I'm the bad guy.5 I am fairly certain that all the misery in Latin America is my own personal fault. And I feel terrible about it.
ANYWAY, I have always remembered this fellow's attitude... even though he was both "us" and "them." I remember writing at the time, in an endless and unmailable letter to my father, that this fellow spent days telling me - essentially - how "we" were defeated by "us." I'm thinking of that now as I wonder about the very - very - very ancient Italians with their broccoli, before they came to Italy. And I wonder what it is to be Italian?
Pliny and the Gang
It is suspected that one guy who was both Italian AND Roman - the Roman soldier, author and natural philosopher, Gaius Plinius Secundus, (23 -79 CE) better known as Pliny the Elder - wrote about broccoli is his landmark Naturalis Historia. Even if this is so, we're talking about at least 1000 years after the Etruscans left Turkey. (I don't even consider 23 CE to be that long ago.)
I wrote in more detail about Pliny in an earlier essay: Pliny the Elder (Broccoli I). That particular essay got me sidetracked on his Naturalis Historia… and what a thing the Naturalis Historia is! Really. Thirty-seven volumes.
The last lines sum it up nicely:
"Greetings, Nature, mother of all creation, show me your favor in that I alone of Rome's citizens have praised you in all your aspects."
Natural History 37.205;
translated by J. Healy
This line [above] is crucial to understanding the text, which is above all a Roman text. In fact, Pliny is Romanizing science, which had until then been a Greek territory. He really tries to offer descriptions of every aspect of the world. And it must be said: Pliny lives up to the expectations. In thirty-seven volumes, he does describe the full complexity of nature. And more than that, because in Pliny's view, which was common in Antiquity, "nature" includes things that we would call "culture."[vi]
Pliny was really quite a cool guy in many ways. He believed that "true glory consists of doing what deserves to be read, and writing what deserves to be written."
I, on the other hand, believe that true glory consists of living with dogs and not being the object of continual shouting or pouting. Money isn't bad either. But I'm not really interested in any other kind of glory.
This has nothing do with anything, does it?
Sorry.
Thing is, Pliny didn't actually mention broccoli by name… and he wasn't too specific. In fact, Pliny recognized three related plants, one of which might have been broccoli. Maybe. Certainly they were coleworts.
The cleanest information I can find is from John Gerard's "The Herbal" (1597), "the best known botanical work published in English. It has remained popular for over 400 years for its amalgamation of horticultural lore, its collection of medical "virtues" of plants, and, not least, its graceful and delightful English prose. It is still useful and still a delight."[vii]
Amazon has a Deluxe Clothbound Edition (over $150 or so) of Gerard's The Herbal or General History of Plants, but I need one that I can keep on my potting bench and get wet, dirty and ruined without any remorse. I'm hell on my books. I don't own a copy of The Herbal but am working on it. I won't buy this one. I don't begrudge spending on books... but... one must try to be reasonable… unless the book is on sailboats, architecture, photography, wood or anything by Robert Frost - (In those cases I'm an unabashed fool).
But back to broccoli…
An entry at Killer Plants.com reads:
When John Gerard wrote The Herbal in 1597, he mentioned that Theophrastus (4th century BCE) and Pliny the Elder (1st century CE) recognized three "coleworts." By Gerard’s time, gardeners had created many more. He recognized fifteen Brassica: the "wilde", the "loved coleworts" (cabbages), "open coles" (kales and collards), "curled savoys" (apparently broccoli types), and "colie floures". One of the odder types, the "parsley colewort", he described as having "very large leaves deepely jagged even to the middle rib…resembling great and rank parsley [with] a great thicke stalke of three cubits (1.5 meters or 4.5 to 5 feet) high…."
- The Herbal, John Gerard, 1633 edition
The point is, we know that broccoli is Italian but we can't be sure who first thought it worthy of writing about… and when. There's no question that the elder Pliny ATE something like broccoli. But how close? We don't know.
Anyway… the history of Broccoli…
Broccoli and the Apicius
Roberto Bompiani's "Roman Feast"
Learn more here
Some "vegetable scholars"6 recognize broccoli in the Apicius - which is the ultimate Roman cookbook. [viii]
From the wikipedia entry on the Apicius:
"Apicius is the title of a collection of Roman cookery recipes, usually thought to have been compiled in the late 4th or early 5th century AD7 and written in a language that is in many ways closer to Vulgar than to Classical Latin.
Apicius is a text to be used in the kitchen. In the earliest printed editions it was given the overall title De re quoquinaria ("On the Subject of Cooking"), and was attributed to an otherwise unknown Caelius Apicius, an invention based on the fact that one of the two manuscripts is headed with the words API CAE.
The text is organised in ten short books which appear to be arranged rather like a modern cookbook:
1 Epimeles — The Chef 2 Sarcoptes — Meats 3 Cepuros — From the garden 4 Pandecter — Various dishes 5 Ospreos — Peas, beans, lentils, chickpeas, etc. 6 Aeropetes — Fowl 7 Polyteles — Fowl 8 Tetrapus — Quadrupeds 9 Thalassa — Seafood 10 Halieus — Fish
The contents are messed up, i.e. some of the recipes should belong in some other chapter. Some recipes are there in two versions, some are clearly truncated, sometimes one line must be missing."
There are some good references in the article: cookbooks, translations, etc.
The name "Apicius" also occurs in the title Apici Excerpta ("Extracts from Apicius") of a completely different Latin cookbook attributed to Vinidarius.[ix]
But nothing clearly indicates broccoli without a doubt.
Tangent: Apicius was ALSO the name applied to at least three Roman epicures: [x]
When I think of Italian food, I don't think of broccoli… but I should. Broccoli is an Italian thing… not for centuries but for millennia. Broccoli was certainly an Italian vegetable, as its name suggests, long before it was eaten elsewhere. [xi]
Broccoli Takes Over The Old World
Fast forward 1500 years or so. Rome has fallen. The Visigoths have overrun Europe and transformed themselves into Gothic Christians. The dark ages have descended. The Franks have conquered and created their own empire with Charlemagne setting himself as the first of what would become Holy Roman Emperors. Islam has been born and flourishes in a golden age of their own… reaching deep into Europe. The crusades have been fought. The Black Death has wiped out between one third and two thirds of the population. The inquisition has been burning people for hundreds of years. The moors are repelled. The Spanish court has sent explorers around the globe. And things are beginning to brighten up…
About 65 years before John Gerard wrote "The Herbal," a fourteen-year-old Florentine girl, daughter of a French princess and an Italian duke (and niece/cousin of an Italian Pope) was sent to Marseille to marry the fourteen-year-old Duc d'Orléans. The year was 1533… in October. (This was almost one year exactly after, on the other side of the world, Francisco Pizzaro captured the Inca King Atahualpa and completed the Spanish conquest of the Incan Empire.) The teen aged boy in Marseille was to become Henry II of France. The girl was Catherine de' Medici and she was to become Queen.
And Catherine was a piece of work. Whoa.
Catherine de Medici is renowned for her obsessions with sorcery, astrology and toxicology as well as her Machiavellian political intrigues. Catherine leveraged these pursuits as effective weapons in her political ambitions. [xii]
Note: It is interesting that she would be described as Machiavellian because Niccolò Machiavelli himself was a Florentine who was closely allied with the Medicis. His major work, The Prince (originally called "De Principatibus" - About Principalities) was written around 1513, but not published until 1532, five years after Machiavelli's death. Catherine would have known him, or at least known about him.
Catherine was a noted toxicologist and herbalist. Under the guise of aiding the ill and unfortunate, Catherine tested her poisons on unwitting degenerates for use in her experiments. Carefully measuring the toxic response, potency, degree of response to the parts of the body and clinical signs and symptoms, she refined her use of poison and utilized it to great success. Many have been purported to be her victims. She also did not reserve her poisons only to herbal concoctions. It is said that at one point she dispatched her priest to Egypt to retrieve mummy remains for incorporation in her experiments. Her interests were not limited solely to destructive poisons, but in herbal remedies as well. The first ten years of her marriage did not produce any offspring, and it is said that she used herbal remedies, astrology and sorcery to conceive her children, three of whom became kings. [xiii]
In fact, Catherine's enthusiasm for mysticism resulted in her consultation and protection of Nostradamus who predicted that her husband would be killed jousting and that she would outlive each of her sons, though each would become king. [xiv]
Henry II did die as a result of a jousting accident when his opponent's lance shattered sending splinters into his golden visor, through both eyes and into his brain. He suffered eleven days before succumbing.
Nostradamus predicted (CI, Q 35)
The young lion will overcome the older one,
on the field of combat in single battle,
He will pierce his eyes through a golden cage,
Two wounds made one, then he dies a cruel death.
She did outlive her three sons. Each did become a king of something.
Whatever.
Catherine de Medici's contributions to French culture were many, though overshadowed by her cunning cruelty and bloody acts. She was the first to champion ballet as an art form in France. She was the first to introduce the fork to the French court, even though it didn't really catch on until Louis XVI. She used snuff sent to her from Jean Nicot8 to aide her with her migraine headaches (she named it 'Herba Regina', the queen's herb). And…
here it comes…
She brought her own cooks with her from Florence, and introduced veal, green beans, parsley, peas, truffles, artichokes and BROCCOLI. She also introduced the use of sauces with meats as opposed to the highly spiced dry rubs of medieval times.[xv]
In fact, it has been claimed that Catherine's arrival in France marks the beginning of French haute cuisine.[xvi]
I like to think of Catherine de Medici and Niccolò Machiavelli as having shared a meal of broccoli together. But that's just me.
In 1724 broccoli was still so unfamiliar in England that Philip Miller's Gardener's Dictionary (1724 edition) referred to it as a stranger in England and explained it as "sprout colli-flower" or "Italian asparagus". [xvii]
Interestingly (maybe), Asparagus is completely UNRELATED to broccoli. Asparagus is in the Genus Asparagus.
Broccoli Sneaks Into The New World
In the American colonies, Thomas Jefferson (who grew all sorts of things - see my earlier essay on tomatoes) had a wide circle of European correspondents from whom he got packets of seeds) noted the planting of broccoli at Monticello along with radishes, lettuce, and cauliflower in 1767.
In 1775, John Randolph, in A Treatise on Gardening by a Citizen of Virginia, felt he had to explain about broccoli: "The stems will eat like Asparagus, and the heads like Cauliflower." [xviii]
And this reminds me of an endearing tale of love and compatibility I was told by a friend. It seems he and his bride both like and dislike broccoli in a very compatible way. One likes the stems. The other likes the heads. They cook broccoli together and divide the bounty. Perfect. This must be a very nice way to live.
There's more history of broccoli in recent times. It's good stuff. Juicy. There's beautiful women, dangerous men, unsolved murder, the Italian mafia, Vanderbilts, Hollywood and marketing geniuses. But I'll save this for another tale soon. (It's a long tale… and this one has gone too long already.)
But what's so confusing about all this?
It has to do with what broccoli is.
The entire notion underlying this system of taxons, ranks and epithets is that a given species is substantially different from another similar plant.
For example: Solanum lycopersicum (the Tomato) is different from Solanum tuberosum (the Potato) and Solanum melongena (the Eggplant). All are in the Solanum genera, all are very closely related, but each is different.
This is straightforward.
Things are not so straightforward for broccoli.
It is true that Brassica oleracea is the Genus species nomenclature for broccoli. However, it is ALSO the Genus species notation for cabbage,
…and cauliflower
…and kale
…and collards
…and kohlrabi
…and brussels sprouts.
In other words broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, kale, collards, kohlrabi and Brussels sprouts are all are the same species.
Brassica oleracea.
Cabbage is the same genus species as broccoli and all the others. The same.
Another way to put this would be:
Botanically speaking, the differences between broccoli and all the others is taxonomically equal to the differences between two colors of peonies.
Or to put it yet another way, if vegetables were animals and broccoli was a dog, then cabbage, cauliflower, kale, collards, kohlrabi and Brussels sprouts are also dogs… just different breeds.
Remarkable.
The way botanists and horticulturists talk about this is by designating "Cultivar Groups" below the level of species.
Broccoli is in the Italica (of course) Cultivar Group of the species Brassica oleracea. Other cultivar groups include cabbage (Capitata Group), cauliflower (Botrytis Group), kale and collard greens (Acephala Group), kohlrabi (Gongylodes Group), Brussels sprouts (Gemmifera Group) and Chinese broccoli (Alboglabra Group).
This mystifies me. And I bet it would COMPLETELY FREAK Carolus Linnæus.
But it shouldn't. After all, broccoli is the result of thousands of years of man's artificial selection for the suppression of flower development in the wild mustard plant.
The next time you see broccoli, give a thought to history of which you are now a part. Where will you take it? What will you do?
1. There is confusion about Linnæus' name, and for good reason… I've written in some detail about it in my previous essay (9/17/06), Linnæus, Son of No Man!
Most taxonomy today is based upon Carolus Linnæus' great work: the Systema Naturæ. This was published in the Netherlands in 1735 as an eleven-page essay. By the time it reached its 10th edition in 1758, it classified 4,400 species of animals and 7,700 species of plants. The 1758 work is the foundational work for all zoological nomenclature. The full title makes my point: Systema naturæ per regna tria naturæ, secundum classes, ordines, genera, species, cum characteribus, differentiis, synonymis, locis or translated: "System of nature through the three kingdoms of nature, according to classes, orders, genera and species, with [generic] characters, [specific] differences, synonyms, locations."
The three kingdoms he specified were the animal kingdom (Regnum animale), the plant kingdom (Regnum vegetabile) and the "mineral kingdom" (Regnum lappideum).
In terms of Botany, (this essay) the important work to consider is Linnæus' Species Plantarum, which when published in 1753 gave every plant species a name that remained the same no matter what other species were placed in the genus. It rolled out an entirely new and organized way of thinking about plants and has been called the most important document in the history of biology. Back to Text
2. I am not a botanist and I didn't really study botany in school. I did, but not really. See, there was this beautiful red-headed girl named Kathleen who took Botany - I really thought she was she something... anyway I digress. Botany was part of my ridiculous (and expensive) journey through all sorts of majors my first two years: I seem to recall declared majors in architecture, botany, history, art history, business, and political science. There may have been more. Seems like archeology might have been in there somewhere… something about the Yucatan… hell I can't remember. Summer school. Extra classes all the time. I also seem to recall taking a BUNCH of French but can't imagine why. (I'm still taking French to this very day and I've never moved beyond the rudiments. I hesitate to tally the dollars invested to teach me to say Je m'appelle Henri and count to ten. It is aptitude I lack, not fortitude.) Anyway… after completely flabbergasting my father and late mother for at least two years, I ended up going another way. When I think of what my parents sacrificed… Sorry mom. Back to Text
3. Click the link for the St Louis Code. This is the actual document from the ICBN (their homepage) conference in St. Louis (in 1999, notes published in 2000). I'm not an academic but I find this stuff very interesting as it is an example of all of humankind essentially getting together and agreeing to "the rules." Wow. Imagine what Linnæus, working alone, would have thought of a worldwide congress of scientists debating the finer points of a classification and nomenclature system that he invented and deployed often with a great deal of caprice? (See the essay on The Great Blue Heron and The American Goldfinch.) What wouldn't have surprised Linnæus was the fact that these conferences don't settle much and the resulting decisions are subject to change. As proof, there was another conference in Tokyo in 1993 (with notes published in 1994). The rules agreed upon then are called the Tokyo Code. The St. Louis Code is the "current effect" code. Therefore it becomes important to indicate which code one is using. Back to Text
4. Antoine Laurent Jussieu's Genera Plantarum was published in 1789. Linnæus' Genera Plantarum was published in 1736 and eventually evolved into his great work. Clearly, the fact that Jussieu used the same title as used by Linnæus is indicative of something. Respect? Antagonism? I've no idea. Back to Text
5. Today, in the US we don't use words like Mestizo. Imagine how poorly that would go over? And for good reason too... we are, MOST OF US, mixed blood. However we do use two interesting words: Hispanic and Latino. "The nomenclature for Hispanics remains problematic. The term is meant to be all inclusive of anyone with linguistic or cultural antecedents in Latin America and Spain, but major differences, as well as commonalities, exist among these populations."[xix] "For a long time, Hispanics were generically described as ‘Spanish-speaking’ people. The problem with this descriptor is that many Hispanics do not speak Spanish, or at least cannot use it fluently. Also, there are a good number of non-Hispanics who do speak Spanish, so again, this categorization has not been helpful."[xx] "Latino is a largely political term used to describe a community whose descendancy is from Latin America, and it doesn't include those of Spanish origin."[xxi] "Many Hispanics, especially Mexican-Americans, choose not to identify with Spain because of the often tragic colonial experience – and by virtue of the fact that most possess mixed racial antecedents, either native American or African, that are not of European origin."[xxii] The term Hispanic is often less desirable (in certain geographies) than the term Latino. The rule I was taught (for political work and by whom I won't say) was: in California say Latino, in Texas and surrounding areas say Hispanic, in Florida it depends upon the audience and it's anyone's guess everywhere else. Back to Text
6. I think I'd like to be a vegetable scholar. Back to Text
7. OK, I admit it. I can't keep up. When I went to school, the books dated things as BC or AD - Before Christ or Anno Domini (The Year of Our Lord). I guess this isn't kosher anymore as nowadays I read CE (Common Era, Christian Era, Current Era) and BCE (Before the CE). There is a debate on this... but I don't have the energy for such things (I'd rather spend mine on COMPLETELY VAPID things like this essay). Should you like to read more on the Common Era nomenclature, feel free to do so here... follow it where it takes you. My problem is I'm trying to be consistent but I'm quoting things that are not. I've quoted them as I've found them. Whatever. Back to Text
8. Jean Nicot (1530 - 1600) was a French diplomat and scholar. He was French ambassador in Lisbon, Portugal from 1559 to 1561. Jean Nicot was 29 years old in 1559 when he was sent from France to Portugal to negotiate the marriage of six-year-old Princess Marguerite de Valois to five-year-old King Sebastian of Portugal. When Nicot returned, he brought tobacco plants and introduced snuff to the French court. Catherine de' Medici, at the time Queen Mother, became an instant tobacco convert. The plant was also an instant success with the Father Superior of Malta, who shared tobacco with all of his monks. More and more of the fashionable people of Paris began to use the plant, making Nicot a celebrity.
At first, the plant was called Nicotina. But nicotine later came to refer only to the active ingredient of the plant. The tobacco plant, Nicotiana, also a flowering garden plant, is named after him, as is nicotine. Back to Text
Book List (To Complete Book List)
The Apicius | Carolus Linnæus | John Gerard's Herbal (1597) | Nostradamus | Catherine de Medici | House of Medici | Niccolò Machiavelli | Philip Miller's Garden (1724) | Samual Pepys | Pliny the Elder
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Pliny the Elder Naturalis Historia
37 Original Volumes
10 Loeb Classics Volumes
Click Here
[xix] SOURCE: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Minority Health, Hispanic Agenda for Action, “Hispanics in the United States: An Insight Into Group Characteristics” January 14, 2000 Link Here
[xx] SOURCE: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Minority Health, Hispanic Agenda for Action, “Hispanics in the United States: An Insight Into Group Characteristics” January 14, 2000 Link Here
[xxi] SOURCE: Report from Futuro Strategies LLC, Senatorial Handbook “The Secret of Successful Political Advertising to Hispanics,” Republican National Senatorial Committee - Election Cycle 2002
[xxii] SOURCE: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Minority Health, Hispanic Agenda for Action, “Hispanics in the United States: An Insight Into Group Characteristics” January 14, 2000 Link Here
good GAWD! man, you really know your broccoli. seriously. have you ever considered writing a book? if you haven't - and i can't imagine you haven't - you certainly should. i love broccoli. i like it steamed with lemon. i know george bush the senior won't eat it. my knowledge of broccoli ended there, until today.
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Clerk's Response: Thank you for the compliment. No books. I READ books not write them. Plus, this is blogging - the democratization of publishing - who needs to write a book? I have a Texan musician and soap-maker already reading!
Posted by: melissa mcgee | November 06, 2006 at 09:12 AM
Actually What I was wanting to know was what a cauliflower looks like after the buds open
Posted by: mathew | June 03, 2007 at 12:12 AM