"I KNOW it's Cilantro!"

Have another "Guest Gardener" story of a friend of mine:

She's heard my tales of my insane cilantro and decided she would try yet again to grow it too.
So instead of one lonely little plant, she goes all out and buys eight! I mean, they really love cilantro!

And off it goes doing well, and she keeps cutting it back as I said to so it doesn't go to seed, but eventually it's inevitable and sure enough - four of the plants flower away ready to produce those promising little hopefully-reproducing seeds.

The other four, though...well...uh...

I was over for a cookout and she says, "Okay, you need to come down and look at my cilantro; half the plants got the little flowers like you said, but the other half got these huge leaves! Like bigger than I've ever seen on cilantro!"

Huh, ok, weird.

So we walk down the yard to her garden.

I get within 6 feet and go, "Uh...that's parsley"

"No it's not! It's cilantro!"

She's so adamant that I think maybe I'm wrong after all - I mean, I'm not exactly a veteran gardener myself, but I feel like herbs are the one thing I've actually done consistently well at and I cook with them a lot....question mark, question mark...

Pick a leaf. Sniff.

"It's parsley"

"No, it can't be!"

Taste the leaf.

"It's parsley"

"But I bought cilantro! They all said cilantro on the tags!"

Pick one of the few remaining cilantro leaves on the flowering plants next to the parsley. Instantly smell that oh-so-distinctive cilantro. Taste the leaf. "Yup"

After condolences and a reassurance that I've totally done that before and they are easy to mistake, etc., she's still so shocked and in disbelief.

I suggest we have my husband try it just in case I really am totally out of touch - he's always seemed to be good at identifying herbs.
She jumps on that - "Ok, I'm bringing him one of each leaf"

So back up to the party we walk and she hands him the 'mysterious' green leaf: "Ok, time to identify what herb this is!"

Poor guy, now that I've totally put him on the spot, sniffs it, tastes it, is in the middle of chewing and determining: "Well, I know it's not cilantro..."    "No!"     "...is this parsley?"

Me: "Yup"
Woman sitting nearby: "Yeah, I was thinking that leaf looked like Flat Italian Parsley"

Husband tastes cilantro leaf: "THAT's cilantro!"

My poor friend, so incredulous and dejected: "Well - I've made salsa with it, I've made lime cilantro rice and everyone loved it!"

Much laughter and telling her she found a new secret ingredient, etc. Don't think it consoled her.
I was surprised she didn't have a shovel in hand digging out the parsley bushes as we were leaving! Haha! She was so sad. I can relate. Oh, how I can relate!!

So I really hope her cilantro does reseed itself as I've told her it should!
Hopefully it's not just my freak zombie version that does so!



                   Public Service Announcement: