Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution 51: 577–580, 2004. # 2004 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 577 Short note Wild artichokes of south Italy: did the story begin here? w Domenico Pignone* and Gabriella Sonnante CNR Institute of Plant Genetics, Via Amendola 165/A, 70126 Bari, Italy; *Author for correspondence (e-mail: domenico.pignone@igv.cnr.it) Received 13 June 2003; accepted in revised form 19 December 2003 Key words: Cynara cardunculus, Domestication, Variation, Wild germ plasm collection Abstract A collection of wild artichokes (Cynara cardunculus L. var. sylvestris (Lam.) Fiori) was conducted in south Italy. The distribution of the wild populations was not even all over the explored territory, from the coastline to the inner mountains, and in some areas wild artichokes were completely absent. A certain level of morphological variation for height and habit of plants, size and shape of capitula, length, shape, and position of bracteal spines, was observed. It has been noticed that picking capitula from the wild for human consumption is a common habit in southern Italy and Sicily. Historical data and etnobotanic inference suggest the idea that the artichoke could have been domesticated in south Italy, and Sicily in particular, and was spread by the Arabs to other regions of the Mediterranean Basin. Within the framework of a project aimed at studying the genetic variability within cultivated artichokes (Cynara cardunculus L. var. scolymus (L.) Fiori) and between these and the wild artichoke (C. cardunculus L. var. sylvestris (Lam.) Fiori) gene pool, collecting missions in the south of Italy were carried out in order to secure wild artichoke germ plasm from Puglia, Basilicata, and Calabria regions (Figure 1). Much evidence indicates that C. cardunculus var. sylvestris can be considered the wild progenitor of the cultivated artichoke (Wiklund 1992; Basnizki and Zohary 1994; Rottenberg and Zohary 1996; Rottenberg et al. 1996). It is distributed in the Mediterranean Basin, including the inner areas and the islands, and it is also found in south Portugal, in the Canary and Azores Islands. The collecting trips allowed the identification of many sites where wild artichokes were present. The distribution of populations of this taxon was not even all over the explored territory; in some instances very small populations with isolated indi- viduals were observed, while in other cases the populations were very large, with a high number of individuals covering a range of several kilo- metres. Collecting sites were selected taking into account the outcrossing nature of this species; in particular, in the case of continuous populations, collecting sites were selected when some natural feature introduced a discontinuity into the popula- tion or forced plants into a different environmental condition. As a general rule, in all the regions examined, wild artichokes avoid shallow calcareous ground, preferring deeper sandy, clayey and loamy soils with high sun exposure. Often they grow in asso- ciation with other Cardueae which apparently show the same edaphic preference such as Onopordum illyricum L., Carthamus lanatus L., Carduncellus caeruleus (L.) C. Presl, Silybum marianum (L.) Gaertn., etc. Large populations w Institute of Plant Genetics Publication, No. 32