Could I have escaped cilantro here?

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dawnnys

Well-known member
I went out to the garden this morning and started digging up the weeds that had grown over the fall and early spring (although still technically "winter").

As I plucked one bunch of thick green leaves, I smelled the distinct odor of cilantro. I put the herb (weed?) to my nose and took another whiff. Sure smelled like cilantro to me!

It looks like parsley with lobed leaves (3 lobes on the terminal stalk). Although it's a community garden, and could well have escaped from one of the other gardens, no one says that they grew cilantro last year.

It's been a while since I've bought it fresh, so I'm not that sure that's what this is... I took a look online, and the stock pictures look pretty close to what I have, but does cilantro usually "travel" like this? Via the wind? I also had some mysterious wild carrots in there in late-summer, so I guess things can do that. Is cilantro parsley the same as cilantro?

Salsa, anyone?

 
Sounds like it. I don't know anything else that smells like cilantro. The leaves have a distinct

sawtooth border on them but otherwise look like parlsey as you describe.

If it goes to seed it will spread around and sprout up like that, and so will carrots. Both like cool weather. The seed could have lay dormant for a while and then popped up when the conditions were right, or these plants could have been seeding themselves around undetected for a few years. Both cilantro and carrots (and parsley) have flowers that look like Queen Anne's lace.

I haven't heard of "cilantro parsley" but I doubt it is a separate plant. Cilantro is also called Mexican parsley and Chinese parsley by some.

Hope that helps!

 
Yes, it loves to choose its new location for the next season. Arugula is even worse. Those teeny

little seeds sprout up in the strangest places.

It always got too hot for my cilantro, as Joe says, it likes cooler weather, so I used to let it go to seed and harvested the seed. Best way to get tasty coriander. And it travels easily in the wind.

I didn't know that 'volunteer' term until I came to the west coast. What a whole new world.

 
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