Years in the making, it's finally here.
Unicorn kale.
No forehead horn, hardly mythical, and as of November, when it will first appear in a seed catalog, no longer even hard to obtain. But the name stays.
Masterminded by Phillip Griffiths, associate professor in the School of Integrative Plant Science, Horticulture Section at Cornell AgriTech in the College of Agriculture and Plant Sciences, said it's about "taking brassica vegetables into a new zone by letting the plants show us the way."
Griffiths' work is driven by consumers' increasing acceptance of new, quirky and aesthetically pleasing foods.
"Who wants a kale salad when you can have a unicorn kale salad?" Griffiths said. "Innovation and creativity come from imagining a different type of future, not from looking in the rearview mirror."
Unicorn kale is full speed ahead: In Johnny's Selected Seed catalog for 2026, to be released mid-November, unicorn kale is listed in three locations in the catalog: as a full-size kale and for premium baby leaf and micro-kale growing.
But the hype is hardly in the name alone. To misquote Shakespeare, "What's in a name? That which we call a kale, by any other name would taste as sweet."
Even when unicorn kale, then known only by an anonymous cultivar number, was grown in trials at High Mowing Organic Seeds in sandy loam soils in Hyde Park, Vermont, it had fans.
Among testers' comments: "Purple stems/veins, green to light green leaves. Flat leaves with big ruffled edges. Easy to bunch. Thick stems and straight mid ribs. Very upright and lovely! We love these. Very consistent. Nice leaves and crop. Beautiful."
But here's the kicker: "Different from anything on the market."
Griffiths said back in about 2014, he and his team dug up 15 very different brassica breeding line types, ranging from red curly kale to lacinato, with a wide range of phenotypes, intercrossing them to develop about 160 hybrid combinations that were selected over several years with plenty of dead ends along the way.
"We could see that some of them looked very different from current market classes. We continued to self-pollinate and select the most interesting types, generating feedback along the way. Unicorn Kale traces back to a golden collard line crossed with a red leaf curly kale line," Griffiths said.
With kales, Griffiths said, the more blue-green plants are typically chewier and can be bitter. A golden leaf is generally more tender and crisp, perhaps friendlier to the mainstream market. Kale wasn't developed as a raw salad crop, but it started entering new culinary territory about 15 years ago when people realized it had a good mouth feel and complemented more complex and robust flavors (toasted nuts, dried fruit, blue cheese), especially when given a little massage to break down the fibers.
"Kale burst onto the scene and then ran into a wall," Griffiths said, "because it didn't really have any follow-up. People are ready for more new and different types of kale."
This new kale, he said, has the texture people like without much bitterness and with much cooler aesthetics. A golden green color filigreed with a purple vein gives it a festive look. It's not only a versatile ingredient, it's a solid new option for controlled environment agriculture businesses because it grows well indoors as a premium baby green.
Whether the public grabs this new product by the, um, horn remains to be seen, but Griffiths hopes it will herald more people eating their greens, because "when you make whole foods more fun, that's a strategy to get people to consume more of what is good for you."
He isn't claiming the name as his own handiwork, however.
"Johnny's started using the term because it was so different from what they were expecting kale to be," he said. "They suggested that to me."
