Broccoli Vegetable

Broccoli is a plant of the Cabbage family, Brassicaceae (formerly Cruciferae). It is classified as the Italica Cultivar Group of the species Brassica oleracea. Broccoli possesses abundant fleshy green flower heads arranged in a tree-like fashion on branches sprouting from a thick, edible stalk. The large mass of flower heads is surrounded by leaves. Broccoli most closely resembles cauliflower, which is actually just a different cultivar of the same species, but broccoli is green rather than white. Common varieties are calabrese and purple sprouting broccoli.

Broccoli is a cultivar of wild cabbage, remaining exactly the same species. Wild cabbage originated along the northern and western coasts of the Mediterranean, where it was apparently domesticated thousands of years ago. That domesticated cabbage was eventually bred into wildly different cultivars, including broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, kohlrabi, and brussels sprouts, all of which remain the same species. 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. Some vegetable scholars recognize broccoli in the cookbook of Apicius. Broccoli was 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 the American colonies, Thomas Jefferson was also an experimentative gardener with a wide circle of European correspondents, from whom he got packets of seeds for rare vegetables such as tomatoes. He noted the planting of broccoli at Monticello along with radishes, lettuce, and cauliflower on May 27, 1767. Nevertheless, broccoli remained an exotic in American gardens. 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 few crates were initially shipped to Boston, where there was a thriving Italian immigrant culture in the North End. The broccoli business boomed, with the D'Arrigo's brand name "Andy Boy" named after Stephano's two-year-old son, Andrew, and backed with advertisements on the radio. Broccoli and cauliflower, which are actually cultivars of the same species, have been crossbred to produce brocciflower. It was first cultivated in Europe around 1988. Its very pale green heads are densely packed like cauliflower but has the flavour of broccoli. The word broccoli comes from the Latin brachium, meaning arm, via the Italian braccio.

There are three commonly grown varieties of broccoli. The calabrese is the most familiar, with large green heads and thick stalks, and is named after Calabria in Italy where it was first cultivated. It is planted in spring and farmed in August. Sprouting broccoli has a larger number of heads with many thin stalks. It is planted in May to be harvested during the winter or early the following year. Romanesco broccoli has a distinctive fractal appearance of its heads, and is yellow-green in colour. White and purple varieties are also available in some areas.

Broccoli Nutrition:
Thiamin (Vit. B1)
Riboflavin (Vit. B2)
Niacin (Vit. B3)
Pantothenic acid (B5)
Vitamin B6
Folate (Vit. B9)
Vitamin C
Calcium
Iron
Magnesium
Phosphorus
Potassium
Zinc