The tubers persist for years after being planted, so the species expanded its range from central North America to the eastern and western regions.

[citation needed] Early European colonists learned of this and sent tubers back to Europe, where they became a popular crop and naturalized there.

It later gradually fell into obscurity in North America, but attempts to market it commercially were successful in the late 1900s and early 2000s.

Over time, the name girasole (pronounced closer to [dʒiraˈsuːlə] in southern Italian dialects) was corrupted by English-speakers to Jerusalem.

Samuel de Champlain, the French explorer, sent the first samples of the plant to France, noting its taste was similar to that of an artichoke.

[20][21] The name topinambur, in one account, is attributed to the Brazilian coastal tribe called the Tupinambá, several members of which were brought to France in 1613 at the same time that the tubers were beginning to make an appearance on French tables.

The New World connections were conflated, the plant being misattributed to Brazil, resulting in the name toupinambeaux (earliest known use 1618) being applied to the tubers in French.

[22][23][24] According to Iroquois mythology, the first sunchokes grew out of Earth Woman's feet after she died giving birth to her twin sons, Sapling and Flint.

[25] Jerusalem artichokes were first cultivated by the Indigenous peoples of the Americas, though the exact native range of the species is unknown.

[26] The French explorer Samuel de Champlain discovered that the native people of Nauset Harbor in Massachusetts had cultivated roots that tasted like artichoke.

The following year, Champlain returned to the same area to discover that the roots had a flavor similar to chard[27] and was responsible for bringing the plant back to France.

The French explorer and Acadia's first historian Marc Lescarbot described Jerusalem artichokes as being "as big as turnips or truffles," suitable for eating and taste "like chards, but more pleasant."

In 1629, the English herbalist and botanist John Parkinson wrote that the widely grown Jerusalem artichoke had become very common and cheap in London, so much so "that even the most vulgar begin to despise them."

[29] Its rapid growth and its ability to reproduce from buried rhizomes and tubers facilitates the Jerusalem artichoke's uncontrolled spread.

Their inulin form of carbohydrates give the tubers a tendency to become soft and mushy if boiled, but they retain their texture better when steamed.

John Gerard's Herbal, printed in 1621, quotes the English botanist John Goodyer on Jerusalem artichokes:[56] which way soever they be dressed and eaten, they stir and cause a filthy loathsome stinking wind within the body, thereby causing the belly to be pained and tormented, and are a meat more fit for swine than men.Jerusalem artichokes have 650 mg potassium per 1 cup (150 g) serving.

[60] Pigs, for example, can eat the tuber either dried or directly from the ground or the green plant biomass (stalks and leaves) from the pasture.

[61] Washed Jerusalem artichoke tubers can be fed to many animals, and silage produced from the harvested stalks and leaves.

Red Rossler contains other ingredients such as currants, producing a schnapps with about 50% alcohol used as digestif and as a folk remedy for diarrhea or abdominal pain.

[citation needed] In the 1980s, the Jerusalem artichoke also gained some notoriety when its seeds were planted by Midwestern US farmers at the prodding of an agricultural attempt to save the family farm.

The only real profit in this effort was realized by a few first-year growers (who sold some of their seed to other farmers individually as well as with the help of the company attempting this venture).