This natural history drawing from the 'Paper Museum' of Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588–1657) and his brother Carlo Antonio (1606–89) shows an anomalous head of broccoli, with an enlarged and flattened stem and irregularly attached leaves. Broccoli are cultivars of Brassica oleracea, a herbaceous species belonging to the family Brassicaceae. There has been considerable confusion over the vocabulary of the brassicas. The word broccoli has generally been used for those forms of cauliflower which do not produce heads until the year after sowing; but there are some varieties that have long been called broccoli despite producing heads in the autumn after sowing. Broccoli were often illustrated in botanical texts, and no fewer than sixteen varieties appear in Tabernaemontanus’ Eicones plantarum (J. Theodorus, Eicones plantarum seu stirpium, Frankfurt 1590). Broccoli had long been cultivated in Italy when it was introduced to England in the early eighteenth century, and the few varieties then grown carried Italian names, Roman (purple-headed) and Neapolitan (white-headed).

This anomalous specimen is depicted life size and carries numerous green floral buds. The leaves vary from oval to lanceolate with toothed margins and rounded tips.  An interest in deformed specimens was common among seventeenth-century collectors. The study of ‘strange and monstrous objects, in which nature deviates and turns from her ordinary course’ (in the words of the philosopher Francis Bacon) was considered essential to understanding the workings of nature. 

Laid down on a George III two-ply mount with wash borders (‘type D’ mount).

Text adapted from Fabio Garbari and Lucia Tongiorgi Tomasi, Flora: The Erbario Miniato and other Drawings, Part B.VI of The Paper Museum of Cassiano dal Pozzo: A Catalogue Raisonné, 2 vols, London 2007, cat. 291.