Apiaceae FAMILY

Silaum silaus

Edibility

1/5

Medicinal

0/5

Safety & Hazards

None known

Cultivation Details

HabitPerennial

Growth—

An easily grown plant, it succeeds in most soils and can be grown in the summer meadow. The whole plant, when bruised, emits a most unpleasant smell of sulphured hydrogen which is difficult to remove from the skin. If eaten by cattle, the plant will impart its smell to the milk^[1].

Propagation

Seed - we have no information for this species but suggest sowing the seed in spring in a cold frame. When they are large enough to handle, prick the seedlings out into individual pots and plant them out in early summer. If you have enough seed then an outdoor sowing in situ in the spring should also succeed. Cite as: Temperate Plants Database, Ken Fern. temperate.theferns.info. 2026-02-21. <temperate.theferns.info/plant/Silaum+silaus>

Pollinators

Bees

References

[1]Scented Flora of the World. — Genders. R. · Robert Hale. London. · 1994 · ISBN 0-7090-5440-8 ↩︎An excellent, comprehensive book on scented plants giving a few other plant uses and brief cultivation details. There are no illustrations.
[2]Flora of the British Isles. — Clapham, Tutin and Warburg. · Cambridge University Press · 1962 · ISBN - ↩︎A very comprehensive flora, the standard reference book but it has no pictures.
[3]Sturtevant's Edible Plants of the World. — Hedrick. U. P. · Dover Publications · 1972 · ISBN 0-486-20459-6 ↩︎Lots of entries, quite a lot of information in most entries and references.
[4]Tanaka's Cyclopedia of Edible Plants of the World. — Tanaka. T. & Nakao S. · Keigaku Publishing; Tokyo · 1976 · ISBN - ↩︎The most comprehensive list of edible plants I've come across. Only the briefest entry for each species, though, and some of the entries are more than a little dubious. Not for the casual reader.
[5]Cornucopia - A Source Book of Edible Plants. — Facciola. S. · Kampong Publications · 1990 · ISBN 0-9628087-0-9 ↩︎Excellent. Contains a very wide range of conventional and unconventional food plants (including tropical) and where they can be obtained (mainly N. American nurseries but also research institutes and a lot of other nurseries from around the world.