In the 1800s, Jersey Island Was Covered With 12-Foot-Tall Kale (opens in new tab)

If you'd like to grow tree collard / tree kale varieties yourself, check out Project Tree Collard:

https://www.projecttreecollard.org/

They grow great in California (and places with a similar climate), producing harvestable leaves year round.

I learned this recently from another post here on HN:

"Brassica oleracea is a plant species that includes many common cultivars, such as cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, collard greens, Savoy cabbage, kohlrabi, and gai lan."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brassica_oleracea

They’re really common here in the north of Portugal - everybody with a cottage garden, which is everybody, has a grove of them. They’re the principal ingredient in caldo verde (a soup that is eaten pretty much daily, by pretty much everyone) up here - further south they use collard greens, but here it’s all kale. When we moved here we were gifted a few plants, and two and a bit years on they’re going strong, and we’ve propagated them to a few dozen - ours aren’t 12 feet tall, more like 6, but either way, it’s a common home crop, and is mostly human, rather than animal, fodder.

As to walking sticks, haven’t seen them used for that here, but people do use the dried stems as trellises for beans and whatnot.

I saw an old documentary on this called 'Day of the Triffids'...

Where's Jersey Island? Is it anywhere near the island of Jersey by any chance?

I used to go blackberrying on the common above the cliffs at Portlet with my grandfather’s cabbage stalk cane to hold back the thorns…

These remind me of the tree collards that I grow in my garden. Just pull off leaves from the bottom for dinner.

It seems to be specific variety called Brassica oleracea longata (mentioned in the article) although in some places (https://www.victoriananursery.co.uk/Walking-Stick-Cabbage-Se...) it's called Brassica oleracea palmifolia which is a more widely known variety (cavolo nero in Italian).

How is it with plant genetics / breeding and taxonomy? When do you assert that something's a specific variety and apply a name to it?

I have some of the seeds from this variety of kale. It’s called walking stick kale. I’ve been trying to find a place to plant it.

Lived there for years & never knew about this.

how did it taste? i'd imagine horrible otherwise some pre-Sweetgreen would use them up for $15 salads

And it didn't immediately become a tech hub? How???

got some 4' tuscan kale growing in the front yard right now in fact. Now I'm gonna see if I can make a walking cane!