Well worth the trouble

IT'S often when I have my hands full of shopping, perhaps when the car parking is running out, that I see a rare display of perfect romanesco.

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My eyes light up at its beauty, my thoughts turn to supper, but last time I stopped to balance one atop a full bag, it rolled off as I dashed to the car, its perfect point damaged on the kerb. Never again. This year, I'm going back to growing it.

Brassica oleracea (Botrytis Group) 'Romanesco', to give it its proper name, is a lime-green spiralling cone, visually as if a cauliflower and a broccoli had a child. Its conical spiral comprises spirals of conical buds, which are each in turn made up of smaller conical buds ordered into a logarithmic spirals, so it looks similar whether you gaze from a few feet away or with your nose against it.

This fractal pattern of self-repetition occasionally occurs in Nature, but it is very rare in the vegetable world. I have no idea why this unnecessary pattern happens in this brassica, but I like very much that it does. The Fibonacci sequence—a series of numbers where each is the sum of the previous two—for example, 0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21—occurs in spirals or helices, such as in pineapple fruitlets, sunflower heads and in this magnificent brassica.