One Plant, Two Names: Cilantro and Coriander

Cilantro leaf from the coriander plant
Photo by Brad Sylvester, Copyright 2011. Do not copy.

Coriander (Coriandrum sativum) is one of the plants that I've added to my yard. Specifically, I planted it in my herb garden. In New Hampshire it is an annual plant, although it can be self-seeding if the seeds are not all collected before they fall to the ground. In America, the leaves are usually referred to as cilantro while the ground seeds are known as coriander. For cooking, the leaves of the plant are used, usually fresh and green, and added at the end of cooking or used in cold dishes (like salsa). They can also be dried and crumbled for use over the winter, although the dried leaves have much less flavor. Some Thai food recipes that I like to cook also use fresh cilantro. For the most part, any recipe that uses red curry paste will benefit from a bit of fresh cilantro. Whatever the recipe, a little of this flavorful herb goes a long way.

Once the weather gets warmer, cilantro will produce little white flowers. If you pinch these off as soon as the buds form, you can prevent it from bolting for a little while longer, and increase the yield of coriander seeds that you'll get later. At some point, however, the flowers will come too fast to keep up with unless you are tending it every day. While that means the plant is getting ready to stop producing the broader leaves, it also means the plant will soon be producing another spice: coriander. Coriander is simply the ground seeds of the cilantro plant. As the flowers fade, they will, if they've been pollinated, produce a green ball of about 1/8 inch in diameter. This ball will dry and harden over the next couple of weeks. After hardening, it will drop off to reseed your cilantro for the next year. Each one contains two seeds.

Seeds of the coriander plant waiting to dry and harden
Photo by Brad Sylvester. Copyright 2011. Do not copy.

However, the plant produces many, many flowers and many, many seeds. If you collect the seed balls and then grind them up using a spice grinder like this one that I use, you'll have fresh coriander in addition to the cilantro you've stored from this one plant. You can grind up a batch for the winter after harvesting them, or for much stronger flavor, store them whole and just grind a few when you need them.

Coriander is an introduced species, both in my yard and in North America. It grows in southeast Asia (hence it's use in Thai dishes), as well as northern Africa and Southern Europe. I most often use coriander seeds mixed with a few other spices to make what I call a "Morroccan Spice" mixture that reminds me of the flavors of that region.

I originally bought this plant as a group of young seedling plants from a local nursery, but have saved the seeds and replanted it each year. I actually make sure to plant a few seeds around the herb garden each fall, letting them overwinter in the ground. This way, they come up as soon as the temperature and soil conditions are right. That way, I don't have to figure out when it's warm enough to put plants out or go through a hardening off period with plants that I started indoors. By letting the seeds overwinter in place, they do all the thinking for me.