Alexanders

Alexanders is a robust biennial that can reach 1.5 metres, with glossy, dark green, three-parted leaves and rounded umbels of small yellow-green flowers in spring. After flowering it forms paired, ridged fruits that ripen to black, each splitting into two half-moon seeds about 7 mm long.

The plant smells of celery and parsley mixed with a resinous, myrrh-like note, and the seeds taste pungent, bitter and aromatic, somewhere between pepper, parsley and myrrh. The seeds are not a common commercial spice today. They are gathered by foragers and some specialist suppliers, and used whole or crushed, sometimes with the young stems, leaf stalks and flower buds, which are also edible.

Smyrnium olusatrum is native to the Mediterranean region and southern Europe. It was cultivated as a vegetable and herb in Roman times, and the Romans are generally credited with introducing it to Britain and western Europe, where it became naturalised on coastal cliffs and hedgerows, especially in warm, mild regions.

The English name alexanders is usually linked to the Latin name for Alexandrian parsley, indicating its association with Alexandria or Alexander the Great. The genus name Smyrnium comes from the Greek word for myrrh, because of the fragrance, and olusatrum means black pot herb, a reference to the dark seeds and the plant's use in cooking.

Alexanders was a valued food plant across the Roman world. Ancient writers, including the physician Dioscorides and Pliny the Elder, described its use as a vegetable and medicine, and the collection of Roman recipes attributed to Apicius includes it in some dishes. Its seeds served as a pepper-like spice when black pepper was costly.

After the fall of Rome it remained a common kitchen garden plant in medieval Europe, grown by monasteries and eaten as a spring vegetable at a time when few greens were available, with the stems blanched and cooked like celery. Herbals of the 16th and 17th centuries describe it among useful pot herbs and sea-shore plants.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, celery was improved and spread through European gardens, and alexanders gradually fell out of cultivation. It survived as a wild plant that dominates verges and sea cliffs in southern England and Ireland. In recent decades foragers and chefs have rediscovered it, and cooks have used the young shoots, buds and seeds in modern dishes, while its status in Britain remains that of a long-established naturalised plant.

Crushed seeds are used as a peppery, resinous seasoning for meat, fish, pickles, vinegars and spice rubs, and can be added to breads, cheese and vegetable dishes in small amounts. Foragers also eat the young stems, leaf stalks and flower buds raw, blanched or stir-fried, and the root has been eaten cooked, like a rough parsnip.

In traditional European herbal medicine, the plant was used as a digestive and tonic, and as an aid in cleansing the body in spring. The seeds can also be added to pickling brines and vinegar, where their resinous quality works well alongside juniper and coriander.

Alexanders has a long history as a food and folk remedy, and researchers have identified distinctive compounds such as furanosesquiterpenes, including isofuranodiene, that show activity in laboratory studies. There is no clinical evidence that the plant or its seeds treat any condition. Its main value today is culinary and as part of traditional wild-food knowledge in coastal Europe.