Apium is a genus of about 12 species in the carrot family, including wild celery and the garden celery ancestor. Grow the commonly cultivated members in cool, consistently moist soil, since they thrive in wet ground.
Family
Apiaceae (Carrot family)
Grows as
Annual, Perennial
Light
Full sun, Part shade
Water
Keep the soil consistently moist and never let it dry out.
Soil
Rich, moisture-retentive soil with plenty of organic matter.
Temperature
15–21 °C is ideal; protect from hard frost and heat above about 27 °C.
How easy
Moderate
Safety
Not known to be toxic
Edible
Yes, some parts
About
Apium is a genus, as currently circumscribed by Plants of the World Online, of 12 species of flowering plants in the family Apiaceae, with an unusual highly disjunct distribution with one species in the temperate Northern Hemisphere in the Western Palaearctic (Europe, western Asia, north Africa), and the rest in the temperate Southern Hemisphere in southern Africa, southern South America, Australia, and New Zealand. They are prostrate to medium-tall annual, biennial or perennial herbs growing up to 1 m high in wet soil, often marshes and salt marshes, and have pinnate to bipinnate leaves and small white flowers in compound umbels. Some species are edible, notably Apium graveolens, which is the wild ancestor of the commercially important vegetables celery, celeriac and leaf celery.
Where it grows
Apium species, including garden celery, are eaten by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species including angle shades, common swift, Hypercompe icasia, the nutmeg, setaceous Hebrew character and turnip moth.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Apium by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.