Cilantro

Coriandrum sativum

Apiaceae

The herb people argue about — leaf for salsa, seed for digestion. A two-crop kitchen annual.

Culinary leaf (cilantro) and seed (coriander). The same plant, two crops.

Parts used: Leaf · Ripe seed
Traditional notes: Culinary leaf · After-meal seed · Traditional digestive spice
Grow · USDA 6b: Cool-season annual Successions every two weeks in cool weather. Direct-sow; it resents transplanting. In work: Mar · Apr · May · Sep · Oct
Harvest: Leaf young; seed when umbels tan.

Sow often. One planting is a week of salsa, not a summer.
Heat makes it bolt to seed — that is how you get coriander.
Bag ripening umbels or they shatter.

Safety

Known cilantro allergy

Companions

Keep apart from Fennel.

Lookalikes

Parsley — Two flat-leaf herbs on the same board. One is coriander. The other is Petroselinum. A soapy leaf is not hemlock — but the umbel family still wants a name.

Lore

Coriander is in the Tutankhamun cache. The leaf splits humanity by a gene, OR6A2, into soap people and salsa people. Neither camp is wrong. The seed is the same plant after it has had a think.

The Herbarium — a teaching catalog, not a clinic. Traditional use is history, not a prescription. USDA 6b dates are a week either way, not a promise. Do not eat, drink, or harvest a plant you cannot name.