The Artichokes - WAIWHAKAMUKAU

Despite its name, the Jerusalem artichoke has no relation to Jerusalem, and it is not a type of artichoke, though the two are distantly related as members of the daisy family. The origin of the name is uncertain. Italian settlers in the United States called the plant girasole, the Italian word for sunflower, because of its resemblance to the garden sunflower (note: both the sunflower and the sunchoke are part of the same genus: Helianthus). Over time, the name girasole may have been changed to Jerusalem.^[9] The English later corrupted girasole artichoke (meaning, "sunflower artichoke") to Jerusalem artichoke