Lacinato kale has been grown in the Tuscan countryside since at least the 1700s, where it appears as a traditional ingredient in ribollita and other cold-weather staples. Its common names — dinosaur kale, palm tree kale — speak to a leaf that is genuinely distinctive: long, narrow, blue-green, with a deeply puckered or embossed surface that holds onto dressings and cooks unevenly in the most beautiful way. Plants grow 2 to 3 feet tall in full sun, happy in any well-amended, moist, well-drained soil.

In southern gardens it performs particularly well as a winter crop, tolerating frost and light freezes without complaint and actually improving in flavor when temperatures drop. Harvest leaves from the bottom of the stem upward as they mature, leaving the growing tip intact to produce new growth. Unlike curly kale, Lacinato is tender enough to eat raw with little more than a firm massage, and it breaks down quickly in a hot pan — qualities that make it adaptable across a wide range of cooking. In late winter the plants bolt, sending up small clusters of yellow flowers that early bees seek out before much else is in bloom.