Coriander or cilantro

Appearance

Coriander is native to regions spanning from Southern Europe and Northern Africa to Southwestern Asia.

It is a soft plant growing to 50 cm 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 than those pointing toward it. The fruit is a globular, dry schizocarp 3–5 mm in diameter. Pollen size is approximately 30 μm.

Naming

First attested in English during the late 14th century, the word "coriander" derives from the Old French, which comes from Latin, in turn from Ancient Greek koríannon, possibly derived from or related to "kóris", and was given on account of its foetid, bed bug-like smell.

The earliest attested form of the word is the Mycenaean Greek ko-ri-ja-da-na written in Linear B syllabic script which later evolved to "koriannon" or "koriandron", and.

' is the Spanish word for coriander, also deriving from "coriandrum". It is the common term in American English for coriander leaves due to their extensive use in Mexican cuisine.

Evolution

Coriander grows wild over a wide area of Western Asia and Southern Europe, prompting the comment: "It is hard to define exactly where this plant is wild and where it only recently established itself." Recent works suggested that coriander accessions found in the wild in Israel and Portugal might represent the ancestor of the cultivated coriander.better source neededbetter source needed They have low germination rates and a small vegetative appearance. The accession found in Israel has an extremely hard fruit coat.

Fifteen desiccated mericarps were found in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B level of the Nahal Hemar Cave, published in Kislev 1988, and eleven from ~8,000–7,500 years ago in Pre-Pottery Neolithic C in Atlit-Yam, published as Kislev "et al." 2004, both in Israel. If these finds do belong to these archaeological layers, they are the oldest find of coriander in the world.: 163 

About 500 millilitres of coriander mericarps were recovered from the tomb of Tutankhamen, and because this plant does not grow wild in Egypt, Zohary and Hopf interpret this find as proof that coriander was cultivated by the ancient Egyptians.

The Ebers Papyrus, an Egyptian text dated around 1550 BC, mentioned uses of coriander.

Coriander seems to have been cultivated in Greece since at least the second millennium BC. One of the Linear B tablets recovered from Pylos refers to the species as being cultivated for the manufacture of perfumes; it was used in two forms – as a spice for its seeds and as an herb for the flavour of its leaves.

This appears to be confirmed by archaeological evidence from the same period; the large quantities of the species retrieved from an Early Bronze Age layer at Sitagroi in Macedonia could point to cultivation of the species at that time.

Later, coriander was mentioned by Hippocrates, as well as Dioscorides.