Named in Capitulare de villis
Coriander
Coriandrum sativum
What was written
Coriander appears in the Capitulare de villis. Its presence on a northern estate list is a small piece of evidence about reach: this is a plant of the Mediterranean and the Near East, and finding it ordered grown across the Frankish heartland says something about what the ninth century expected of its gardens.
The plant itself
A slender annual umbellifer whose two kinds of leaf look like different plants — broad and lobed at the base, thread-fine higher up. The scent of the fresh foliage divides people along a documented genetic line; the ripe seed smells of neither.
Still growing
Since the plant was written into that garden list, botanists, herbaria and ordinary observers have recorded finding it 19,785 times.
Live count from GBIF, cached for a week.