Jerusalem Artichoke

Also Sunchoke, Topinambour, Racine de Tournesol, Girasole

Unfortunately, the route across the ocean and back has made succotash of the possibility of any single appellation. The scientific name is easy: Helianthus is from the Greek helios (sun) and anthos (flower); together they advise us that the plant is a member of the sunflower genus; and tuberosus applies to the roots, which are, of course, tubers. But that’s about all that makes sense to any of the frustrated historians who have pursued the wild tangle of probable root words. In 1605 in Massachusetts Champlain sampled the vegetable, which was cultivated by Indians, and reported that it tasted like an artichoke (the heart, most probably, which it slightly resembles in texture and taste). Introduced to Europe shortly thereafter, the change to girasol or girasole (Spanish or Italian respectively, for sunflower), plus the word for artichoke does not seem completely impossible. But the move to “Jerusalem” requires quite a leap of the imagination. As written in an early botanical text: “Jerusalem Artichoke is considered to be a corruption of the Italian Girasole Articiocco ... under which name it is said to have been distributed from the Farnese Garden at Rome,” the custom having been to present newly discovered plants to the Pope, who then passed them along to his favorites, like Cardinal Farnese, who grew them in 1617. But some word-smiths claim that the word girasole was not used until the late nineteenth century. To make matters even less comprehensible, the moniker topinambour appeared on the scene, supposedly because a tribe of that name arrived in France around the same time as the vegetable. As a sales pitch the Jerusalem artichoke was hawked in the streets under the name of those Brazilian Indians.