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To most grocery shoppers, there’s nothing particularly exciting about cauliflower. While the dense and crunchy stalks of this cruciferous plant are great as a side dish or snack, they’re consumed far less than the most popular produce-aisle picks (potatoes, tomatoes, and onions). However, some farmers might say that cauliflower has at least one unique and unexpected property that’s worth your attention: If you listen closely, you can hear it growing.
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It's a factThere’s a good chance that the majority of cauliflower you’ve ever eaten in the U.S. has come from one state: California. The Golden State is a produce powerhouse, and its farmers produce around 90% of the country’s cauliflower supply. (Arizona and Oregon also contribute.)
While most plants are silent, cauliflower is able to eke out a barely audible sound thanks to how quickly it grows. The vegetable can add as much as 1 inch per day under the right growing conditions. That rapid expansion means the florets of the plant’s popcorn-like heads often rub against one another as they grow, creating a noise many farmers call “cauliflower creak.” Some agriculturalists describe the tone as a soft squeak, while others say it’s best described as the faint popping noise made by Rice Krispies cereal when doused in milk. However, there are occasions when cauliflower fields reach a more detectable decibel, like in 2015, when British farmers were graced with optimal weather conditions for their cauliflower harvests. That year, some cauliflower cultivators alerted vegetable enthusiasts to what they believed would be the loudest cauliflower creak in decades.
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The edible head of a cauliflower plant is called a “______.”
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The edible head of a cauliflower plant is called a “curd.”
Vienna is home to a group of vegetable musicians.
The Austrian city of Vienna is often called the “capital of classical music” — after all, it’s where some of history’s most prominent composers (such as Mozart and Beethoven) spent much of their time. It also happens to be a spot where modern experimental artists, like the Vegetable Orchestra, perform regularly. Founded in 1998 as a joke, the group of nearly a dozen musicians builds its own instruments from fresh produce purchased at nearby markets, fashioning drums from pumpkins, recorders from carrots, and more than 150 other produce contraptions. Each concert requires around 70 pounds of vegetables, which are made into instruments over two to three hours and last only one performance. However, audiences who attend Vegetable Orchestra concerts don’t just hear their veggies; they get a chance to eat them, too, since the band’s produce scraps are crafted into a soup that is served after every performance.
Nicole Garner Meeker is a writer and editor based in St. Louis. Her history, nature, and food stories have also appeared at Mental Floss and Better Report.
