You can eat what is above ground if you have a garden. If you get your cauliflower at the store - I usually peel off some of the pieces that look like leaves real tight against the stem, and eat the rest ~ raw or cooked.
ANS 2 - Excellent answer above, just to add to that, the stalk is a very good starter for veg soup if chopped finely. - I often make 'Groontiesoop', a Boer variety of vegetable soup, using cauli and broccoli stalks. Everyone loves it.
You can eat all parts if you want to but you don't have to. I quite like the flower part best.
The curd . The white bit in the centre, not the leaves.
We eat the cauliflower head. This is composed of many small clusters of flowers. You can also eat the green leaf areas of the plant
All of it can be eaten. Florets as a veg or in salad and the stem and leaves in a soup.
You can eat all of it, the stalk is great as a soup base.
All of it can be eaten. Florets as a veg or in salad and the stem and leaves in a soup.
A cauliflower is a flower.
It is the head.
Flower
Cauliflower is the flowering part of the plant.
It is part of 'brassica'.
Cauliflower Root, leaf or flower The name 'Cauliflower' means Cabbage Flower.
cauliflower, broccoli
There is a top plant and then the cauliflower among the leaves, so it doesn't grow underground but on top. Cauliflower plants do send roots underground, but the flowers, the parts that are eaten, grow above ground.
The florets, - the bits of the head.
Flower Condensed inflorescence
It is a plant in it's own right, not part of anything else.