The open plant encyclopedia
Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.
The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.
Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.
Selinum carvifolia
Also called Cambridge Milk Parsley
Little-leaf angelica (Selinum carvifolia), also called Cambridge milk parsley, is a perennial herb of damp fens, wet meadows and marshy pasture across Europe into Central Asia. It is a wild plant rather than a garden or houseplant, and it needs moist, cool, lime-rich conditions.
Selinum carvifolia is a flowering plant of the genus Selinum in the family Apiaceae. The specific name carvifolia signifies 'having leaves resembling those of Caraway'.
It is a plant of fens and damp meadows, growing in most of Europe, with the exception of much of the Mediterranean region, eastwards to Central Asia. Its common name in English is Cambridge milk parsley, because it is confined, in the UK, to the county of Cambridgeshire and closely resembles milk parsley (Peucedanum palustre), an umbellifer of another genus, but found in similar habitats. The two plants are not only similar in appearance, but also grow in similar moist habitats, although they may be told apart in the following manner: P. palustre has hollow, often purplish stems, pinnatifid leaf lobes and deflexed bracteoles; while S.
Selinum carvifolia has been found to contain a guaiene, certain trimethylbenzaldehydes (see also pages aldehyde and benzaldehyde) and minor amounts of other derivatives of the terpenoid (sesquiterpene-coumarin) ferulol. The main constituents of the closely related species S. broteri of Brittany (regarded by some botanists as a subspecies of S. carvifolia) are ferulyl senecioate, isoferulyl senecioate and ferulyl acetoxysenecioate. Trimethylbenzaldehydes occur not only in plants belonging to the Apiaceae, but also in certain members of the Iridaceae: 2,4,6-Trimethylbenzaldehyde occurs in a variety of herbs and spices including Culantro (the leaves of the apiaceous Eryngium foetidum) and in Saffron (derived from the iridaceous Crocus sativus). The compound ferulol was first isolated from (and thus named for) the apiaceous genus Ferula in the year 2006 - the species in question being the Palestinian F. sinaica.
Selinum carvifolia is native to Europe and eastwards to West Siberia and Kazakhstan.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Selinum carvifolia 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.
