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.

A Discussion of Edible and Poisonous Mushrooms

One of the most memorable culinary experiences I’ve had was a wild mushroom soup prepared and served at the Mountain Top Inn in Vermont. My wife and I stayed there on one of our anniversaries many years ago. I don’t have the recipe or remember the chef’s name, but I do remember that the soup had a rich and unique flavor quite unlike ordinary mushroom soup. Unfortunately, I don’t even know what kinds of mushrooms were used in the soup.

The forests of New England are absolutely full of mushrooms of many, many varieties. Some are edible and some will kill you dead. Others fall somewhere in between those extremes.  It is not uncommon here to read about people dying of mushroom poisoning. Often it’s an entire family as someone picked the wrong kind of mushrooms and prepared a family dinner with them. Reading about these kinds of events as a child left me with a very healthy and persistent respect for wild mushrooms. If you’re not 100 percent sure what it is, don’t ever eat it.

Not ever having enough confidence to be 100% sure of a mushroom’s identity, I’ve never picked or prepared wild mushrooms for eating. As a result, I have a long-running streak of more than years without ever having fallen victim to any sort of mushroom poisoning, a streak I intend to continue.  The best way to be sure is to bring a qualified and experienced expert along with you to show you the ropes.

Don’t Listen to Me about Edible Mushrooms

Furthermore, I would never rely on any advice about what mushrooms will or will not kill me that I find on someone’s personal blog, no matter how authoritative they may sound. I’d strongly advise you to use that same caution, especially with regard to my blog. I am not a mushroom expert, I am not giving you enough detail to distinguish edible mushrooms from poisonous ones. Do not try this at home.

Building Mushroom Identification Skills

Having said all of that, I’ve always wanted to learn to identify edible mushrooms, but have never really sat down and tried to learn the skill. Now, however, I am in the process of trying to identify every species of plant, including fungi, lichens and other plant-like creatures (as well as every animal species) that grows or lives in my 5.25 acre yard in Southern New Hampshire. Much of my yard, over four acres by my estimate) is forested so there is a wide variety of plants, animals and mushrooms present.

Always Assume the Worst

If I am to identify all those things, I’ll certainly need to know how to identify mushrooms. That means learning all the important (and minor) characteristics of mushrooms that are used by experts to distinguish one from the other. I’ll need to know which ones have near look-alikes, which ones are easy to identify, and which ones are nearly impossible to be sure of without detailed microscopic or chemical analysis. Always err on the side of survival: if there is any possible alternative identification which is not a confirmed edible variety, assume the worst and don’t take chances.

If I can do all of those things, then I should be able to confidently identify some edible mushrooms. The first mushroom that I found and chose for identification turned out to be the Cleft-foot Amanita (Amanita brunnescens), a mushroom listed as “possibly poisonous,” but certainly related to and similar in appearance to many very poisonous varieties of mushroom. In identifying this mushrooms, I learned a few more of the key traits that I should look for, including how to take a spore print to help narrow it down.

Mushroom Propagation Experiment

I’ve also heard from talking to experienced wild mushroom gatherers this summer, that wild, edible mushrooms frequently do not recur in the same location from year to year, although they might show up again several years later in a spot where they were previously found.  This seems a bit curious, but I suspect that there are either spores or rhizomes present once the mushroom has grown there, but they simply need specific weather conditions to begin growing. Many mushrooms grow among deciduous leaf litter or pine needles, which gets me thinking.

“Seeding” New Mushrooms from a Paper Spore Print

If I take a spore print of a mushroom on a piece of plain paper which is made of much the same raw materials as leaf litter… Could I simply take that spore print to a suitable area of the forested part of my yard similar to where the original was found and place that spore-covered sheet of paper under a layer of leaf-litter and get more of the same mushrooms to grow the following year? I don’t know, but I certainly intend to try. After all, if you are “seeding” a specific variety of mushroom in a very specific location and what grows matches the ID marks for the target species, you can have a pretty darn good confidence in the species and edibility of the resulting mushroom, if any indeed result at all. Furthermore, you could cultivate larger quantities in this manner to ensure a good supply in future years.

Bear in mind, I’m not talking about introducing non-native varieties, but simply helping mushroom species that already grow wild in my yard to grow in more places in my yard, assuming, of course, that I find any edible varieties here to begin with.

Wintergreen (gaultheria procumbens)

Wintergreen or eastern teaberry (Gaultheria procumbens)
Photo by Brad Sylvester, copyright 2010, all rights reserved

I'm going to start off the list of plants that grow in my yard with one that was a very pleasant surprise when I moved here. Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens), sometimes called Eastern Teaberry, is one of the edible native plants that lives in the woods in my yard. It is very plentiful, growing in the shade of the forest canopy. Wintergreen is both edible and potentially deadly poisonous, so please read the information contained in the linked article. It happens to be one of the few plants about which I've already written for Examiner.com so I'm going to refer you to the link below for what I wrote there which includes medicinal properties and poison warnings.

• Read more about Wintergreen

Additionally, I will tell you that this spring, 2011, seemed to be a very good year for new wintergreen plants. The reddish young leaves of new plants seemed to be springing up everywhere.

To date, I haven't found any evidence of the plant being eaten by anything (other than myself). It seems to be pretty well left alone by insects and other herbivores. It grows in normal to moist soil conditions in the shade or very dappled sunlight. It gets it's name, as you might guess, because it stays green and keeps its leaves all year, through even the coldest of New England winters. Given the low light environment in which it lives, it must find it more economical of energy and nutrients to preserve its leaves through winter than to try to grow new ones every spring. Keeping the leaves through winter, of course, also gives wintergreen an advantage in the spring time, it can take advantage of the bare canopies overhead while the sun's indirect rays are still relatively weak in the early part of the year.

I recall that in grade school many years ago in southern Vermont, when we learned how to make little terrariums, wintergreen was one of the plants we sought. It needs little light, can live in humid and moist environment, was very slow growing, and of course, doesn't drop its leaves and look dead in the winter. As a bonus, depending upon the plant you found, it might also have a bright red berry to give the terrarium a little bit of color.

Quick Facts about Wintergreen (Gaultheria procumbens)

Edible: Yes, in small quantities. Can be fermented to make a tea.
Life cycle: Perennial, evergreen
Propagation: Spreading underground rhizomes, less often by seeds contained in berry
Other uses: Essential oil, medicinal uses (See linked article above for details)
Range: Eastern North America from the Gulf of Mexico and north through out eastern Canada (from the USDA website)
Native or introduced: Native, undomesticated
Poisonous: Yes, in quantity. Wintergreen essential oil has been known to cause fatalities through both ingestion and excessive topical use.