The riddle
What Has a Heart That Does Not Beat?
The heart you can cook
Under the overlapping leaves of an artichoke, past the fuzzy choke, sits its heart, the tender base at the center. It sits there as part of a vegetable, so it never beats. In ordinary English "heart" also means the center of anything, as in the heart of a city or the heart of a story. The riddle takes that second meaning and asks the listener to hear the first. A cook peels away the outer leaves to reach the heart last, which is part of why the name suits the prized part.
A flower that was not allowed to open
The part sold as an artichoke is the flower bud of a kind of thistle. Left on the plant, the bud opens into a large purple flower. Nearly all artichokes grown for sale in the United States come from California, and the area around Castroville produces most of them, according to the California Artichoke Advisory Board.
Other hearts in the kitchen
Other plants have hearts too. The pale inner leaves of romaine lettuce are sold as hearts, celery has a heart, and so does the palm. If a listener says one of those, the answer is a fair one. The artichoke is the answer that people expect, because it is the vegetable most often named for its heart.
A riddle with even more hearts
Another riddle on this site counts hearts in a different way: what has 13 hearts but no other organs.