broccoli

Broccoli possesses abundant fleshy green flower heads arranged in a tree-like fashion on branches sprouting from a thick, edible stalk.

Broccoli is a cool-weather crop that does poorly in hot summer weather.

History of broccoli

Roman references to a cabbage-family vegetable that may have been broccoli are less than perfectly clear: the Roman natural history writer, Pliny the Elder, wrote about a vegetable that fit the description of broccoli.

Broccoli was certainly an Italian vegetable, as its name suggests, long before it was eaten elsewhere. It is first mentioned in France in 1560, but 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". 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."

Commercial cultivation of broccoli in the United States can be traced to the D'Arrigo brothers, Stephano and Andrea, immigrants from Messina, Italy, whose company made some tentative plantings in San Jose, California in 1922.

A cross between broccoli and cauliflower, the broccoflower, was first cultivated in Europe around 1988.

Broccoli in popular culture

Broccoli is frequently referred to in popular culture as a vegetable that parents try to force their unwilling children to eat.

In The Simpsons episode Treehouse of Horror XI, Homer is killed by eating broccoli.

Also, in the TV sitcom Seinfeld, Newman refers to broccoli as a "Vile weed!".

Tom "Broccoli" Landers is the current world record holder for eating broccoli.

In 1928, when broccoli was still something of a novelty in the United States, a cartoon appeared in the New Yorker magazine, drawn by Carl Rose with a caption by E.B.