Named in Capitulare de villis
Parsley
Petroselinum crispum
What was written
Parsley is ordered planted by the Capitulare de villis, the ordinance issued for Charlemagne's estates whose final chapter names roughly ninety plants an estate was expected to grow. It is a useful corrective to the idea of a physic garden as a pharmacy: a good half of that list is food, and parsley is on it for the same reason cabbage is.
What is now known
Flat-leaved parsley closely resembles fool's parsley and, at a glance, poison hemlock — a confusion that has killed people gathering it. That risk belongs to the plant, not to any use of it. Concentrated parsley oil is a separate matter again and is toxic in quantities the leaf never approaches.
The plant itself
A biennial umbellifer grown as an annual, forming a rosette of divided leaves in the first year and bolting to a flat head of tiny yellow-green flowers in the second. The curled and flat-leaved forms are the same species.
Still growing
Since the plant was written into that garden list, botanists, herbaria and ordinary observers have recorded finding it 18,765 times.
Live count from GBIF, cached for a week.