Artichoke Artichoke The globe artichoke ("Cynara cardunculus" var. "scolymus") is a variety of a species of thistle cultivated as a food. The edible portion of the plant consists of the flower buds before the flowers come into bloom. The budding artichoke flower-head is a cluster of many budding small flowers (an inflorescence), together with many bracts, on an edible base. Once the buds bloom, the structure changes to a coarse, barely edible form. Another variety of the same species is the cardoon, a perennial plant native to the Mediterranean region. Both wild forms and cultivated varieties (cultivars) exist. This vegetable grows
Degree of an algebraic variety Degree of an algebraic variety In mathematics, the degree of an affine or projective variety of dimension is the number of intersection points of the variety with hyperplanes in general position (for an algebraic set, the intersection points must be counted with their intersection multiplicity) The degree is not an intrinsic property of the variety, as it depends on a specific embedding of the variety in an affine or projective space. The degree of an hypersurface is equal to the total degree of its defining equation. A generalization of Bézout's theorem asserts that, if an intersection of projective hypersurfaces has