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Gardening with Tammy: Know your plants: Cilantro (or is it?)
Tamster 10 months ago | 1 response    

It’s a Schizocarp!!! Cilantro is growing! Let’s eat guacamole in the shade of the avocado tree while watching the fine, feathery leaves of the cilantro plant sway in the breeze.

Cilantro (or Coriander as it is more commonly referred to)

Order: Apiales
Genus: Coriandrum
Species: C. sativum

From the wiki:

Coriander (Coriandrum sativum) is an annual herb in the family Apiaceae. It is also known as cilantro, particularly in the Americas. Coriander is native to southern Europe and North Africa to southwestern Asia. It is a soft, hairless plant growing to 50 cm [20 in.] tall. The leaves are variable in shape, broadly lobed at the base of the plant, and slender and feathery higher on the flowering stems. The flowers are borne in small umbels, white or very pale pink, asymmetrical, with the petals pointing away from the centre of the umbel longer (5-6 mm) than those pointing towards it (only 1-3 mm long). The fruit is a globular dry schizocarp 3-5 mm diameter.

Growing cilantro

Sow your cilantro seeds about 1/2” deep in a sunny spot where you want to have cilantro around for awhile. The seeds will germinate in about ten days and when the plants are around four inches tall you can begin harvesting leaves to use in your favorite recipes.

Cilantro is an annual herb with a long tap root, so don’t expect it to take kindly to being transplanted.

To have a continuous harvest of cilantro sow seed every two weeks.

This lovely little plant will self seed if you let the flowers develop and soon you will have a self propagating cilantro garden, which is really a good thing isn’t it?

Apparently, too much nitrogen in the soil produces a less flavorful plant, so if your cilantro is lacking in flavor, you may want to cut back on the fertilizer. Also, in companion planting, cilantro is reputed to be complimentary with anise, but harmful to fennel.

About cilantro

According to the wiki, all parts of the plant are edible, but the fresh leaves and the dried seeds are commonly used in cooking. Coriander is common in Middle Eastern, Central Asian, Mediterranean, Indian, South Asian, Mexican, Texan, Latin American, Chinese, African and Southeast Asian cuisine.

Cilantro seeds, usually referred to as coriander, are the schizocarps which provide the essential oil linalool and the terpenes (pinenes, ϒ-terpinene, myrcene, camphene, phellandrenes, α-terpinene, limonene, cymene). The total essential oil content in the seed is less than 1% with linalool being 50%-60% and the terpenes around 20%. According to Gernot Katzers spice pages, “in toasted coriander fruits, pyrazines are formed as the main flavour compounds.”

Healing properties

One of the most fascinating healing properties of cilantro according to Ed Smith’s Theapeutic Herb Manual is its ability to, “inhibit the deposition of mercury and lead into the bone and other tissues.” Without the presence of cilantro, the heavy metals in the body were able to hide the diseases from the medication. Diseases which had been “healed” would recur within about two months. After being put on a regime of cilantro, the diseases were completely wiped out. It was a synchronistic event unveiled to Dr. Omura which led to the discovery that people who ate ‘vietnamese soup loaded with cilantro leaves or coriander, as it is also called,’ were able to free their bodies from ‘the diseases trachoma (a type of conjunctivitis), herpes simplex, and chronic fatigue.’

Eating fresh cilantro seems to be a wonderful way to gain the benefits of this tasty herb. Cilantro loses much of its appeal if dried.

If you prefer you could also try making a liquid herbal extract .

Recipes with cilantro/coriander

• Mild Curry Powder
• Cilantro pesto
• Making a liquid herbal extract

Happy Gardening!

References

• Schizocarp diagram from Integrative Biology 335 Systematics of Plants at the University of Illinois
• Ed Smith’s Theapeutic Herb Manual: A Guide to the Safe and Effective Use of Liquid Herbal Extracts
• Coriander at wikipedia
• Cilantro blooming from Javier Koehn at Flickr (CC-SHARE-ALIKE)
• Garden fresh cilantro from Qfamily at FLICKER (CC-ATTRIBUTION)
• Cilantro from JP Puerta at Flickr (CC-ATTRIBUTION)
• Veins of cilantro from ingridtaylar at Flickr (CC-ATTRIBUTION)