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Apium graveolens
Also called Celery
Wild celery is the biennial ancestor of the celery, celeriac and leaf celery grown as vegetables; it grows in damp, often slightly salty soils. Garden celery needs consistently moist soil and cool weather to grow well.
Apium graveolens, commonly known as celery, is an Old World species of flowering plant in the family Apiaceae. It was first described by Carl Linnaeus in 1753.
The species is widely naturalised outside of its natural range and is used as a vegetable; modern cultivars have been selected for their leaf stalks (celery), a large bulb-like hypocotyl (celeriac), and their leaves (leaf celery).
Wild celery is native to much of Eurasia, ranging from Ireland in the west, through Europe north to Scotland, Denmark and Poland, and east to the Caucasus and Central Asia, and as far as the western Himalayas, and also through Macaronesia and North Africa to West Asia and the Arabian Peninsula. It is widely naturalised outside this range, including in Scandinavia, North and South America, Africa, India, central, eastern and southern Asia, and New Zealand. The cultivar groups may also be naturalised.
Wild celery was used for its medical properties and as a condiment by the Ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans, and also in China. The species was later developed as a vegetable, particularly in Italy from the 16th century. Modern cultivars have been selected for different uses, falling into three groups according to the part that is mainly eaten:
Celeriac · Leaf celery · Sea Celery · Celery
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Apium graveolens 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.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
