Plant · P-262

Chinese Artichoke

Stachys affinis

Chinese Artichoke produces small, pearl-shaped tubers with a mild, nutty, artichoke-like taste, eaten raw or lightly cooked - and unlike most other plants in its family, it actually prefers heat and tolerates soggy winter ground. The tubers discolor fast once dug, so they go straight into water or the pot, and they are better scrubbed than peeled, since the ridged skin makes peeling miserable and costs flavor besides. Somewhere with real summer heat it will actually flower, unlike the more commonly published experience of the plant - which means pinching the flower buds through midsummer to keep its energy in the tubers instead of the bloom. It spreads by rhizome and stolon and is nearly impossible to fully dig out, which is less a flaw than a feature: treat it as a perennial that replants its own crop, inside a bed with a hard edge.