Cauliflower groups. In the 1st century AD, Pliny included what he called "cyma" among his descriptions of cultivated plants in "Natural History": ""Ex omnibus brassicae generibus suavissima est cyma,"" ("Of all the varieties of cabbage the most pleasant-tasted is "cyma""). Pliny's descriptions likely refer to the flowering heads of an earlier cultivated variety of "Brassica oleracea", but comes close to describing modern cauliflower. It is found in the writings of the Arab botanists Ibn al-'Awwam and Ibn al-Baitar, in the 12th and 13th centuries when its origins were said to be Cyprus. François Pierre La Varenne employed "chouxfleurs" in "Le cuisinier
Cultivated plant taxonomy followed a similar path to that of all plants until the establishment of the first "Cultivated Plant Code" in 1953 which formally established the cultigen classification category of cultivar. Since that time the classification and naming of cultigens has followed its own path. Cultivated plant taxonomy has been distinguished from the taxonomy of other plants in at least five ways. Firstly, there is a distinction made according to "where the plants are growing" — that is, whether they are wild or cultivated. This is alluded to by the "Cultivated Plant Code" which specifies in its title that it is dealing