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Trigonella caerulea
Also called Sweet Trefoil, Blue White Trigonella
Blue fenugreek is a small annual herb grown mainly for its leaves, pods and seeds used as a spice, especially in Georgian cooking. It is grown like other annual legumes, in sun and well-drained soil.
Trigonella caerulea (blue fenugreek, blue melilot) is an annual herb in the family Fabaceae. It is 30–60 cm tall. Its leaves are obovate or lance-shaped, 2–5 cm long, 1–2 cm wide and saw-toothed in upper part. Its flower stalks are compact, globular racemes, longer than the leaves. The sepals are twice as long as the corolla, its teeth are equal to the tube. The corolla is 5.5-6.5 mm long and blue. The pods are erect or slightly curved, compressed, 4–5 mm long with beak 2 mm. The seeds are small and elongated. It blossoms in April–May, the seeds ripen in May–June. It is self-pollinated.
Blue fenugreek is widely used in Georgian cuisine, where it is known as utskho suneli. It is one of the ingredients of the Georgian spice mix khmeli suneli. The seeds, the pods and the leaves are used. The smell and taste are similar to ordinary fenugreek, but milder. In Switzerland it is used for flavouring the traditional schabziger cheese.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Trigonella caerulea 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.
