(n.) A large herbaceous plant (Cynara Cardunculus) related to the artichoke; -- used in cookery and as a salad.
Example Sentences:
(1) As Margaret Visser notes in The Rituals of Dinner (my go-to book on the subject of table manners), the chamber into which a medieval lord withdrew from his hall to eat his stag pie and cardoons was a forerunner of our living rooms and, by about 1450, increasingly exclusive, used by only the most important of men.