Wild chervil

Among the most well-known plants from the Apiaceae family, along with wild carrot, wild chervil is very widespread and grows in hedgerows and on forests’ edge. This perennial plant, harvested in France, sometimes twice a year, has lightly fragranced leaves and small white flowers with 5 petals. Young leaves and fruit of wild chervil are edible and taste a lot like cultivated chervil, often eaten as a soup in Japan. The flowers can be sprinkled over salads and the seeds can be used as a condiment. In traditional Chinese medicine, the roots are dried and ground into a powder then used in therapeutic doses for their stimulating, digestive, diuretic, fever-reducing, analgesic properties and as a remedy to fight a cough.