Nice! You must be refering to the European Sweet Cicely (Myrrhis odorata) right? Or was the American one also domesticated in Europe? I plant to hopefully cross them both to see what new traits arise.
Does spinach substitute mean any edible leafy green plant? Surely cat’s ears & Oxeye daisy don’t taste like spinach or have the oxalates that give me the spinach mouth feel, right?
You are right. I wasn’t aware of an American name sister 
Interesting if you ca landrace the two 
That’s the plan! I’ve looked into the Phylogenic Trees & both plants are close to each other (Belonging to the same subtribe).
Can you tell me more about the European Sweet Cecily? I’ve heard the green seeds are like flavor bombs. I tried to do that with the American one here but they were too fibrous to enjoy. Are the roots of the European sweet cicely also edible? Are the leaves too strongly flavored hence why you peel the stems as a Sping Vegetable?
Can you take photos of your Hairless strain? I’ve never seen that.
I’ll link to my old blog post:
In the latter I compare my hairless strain with a normal haired plant 
Wow, you have truly an incredible variety! I never seen a Smooth Stem European Sweet Cicely & the Mild stems sound wonderful! Would it be possible to get seeds? I’d happily trade you some of mine, maybe you’d like the American Sweet Cicely to try?
You also wrote all parts are edible, how did the roots taste? How did you eat them, raw or cooked?
If you remind me, I can send you seeds next autumn.
Sending seeds to me from outside EU without healthcertifikate have become illegal, and the customs seems to find any letter with seeds send to me - even from Norway, wich is half EU member.
I have moved to a new garden, since I wrote the blog. In my new garden most plants are eaten by watervoles, Arvicola amphibius. I’ve found a single spot, under an apple tree, where the don’t seem to like the soil, and the I can have my Sweet Cicely.
I’ve eaten all parts, but roots only once. They were coarse, and I decided, I should grow a row like carrots, to harvest first year. Probably first year roots are delightful, but I never followed up.
Awesome thank you!
Yikes! Why so strict?
ah, yea that’s where I could try experimenting, thank you for the valuable info. Did the roots (Despite the Coarse Texture) Still had the flavor of Sweet Cicely?
To my tastebuds, it was like parsnip with a gentle flavour of Sweet Cicely and a sense of umami.
I know a local farmers, who boil the old roots to have vegetable stock for cooking, and then discard the fibrous roots. In his opinion, vegetable stock don’t get better.
WOW! Now I just gotta try them when they are in their first year like one would with carrots.
Very interesting, in his opinion vegetable stock don’t get better eh? I gotta try it myself sometime.
Ah, here we go! This was my source that said Perideridia americana is edible:
https://www.nomadseed.com/2017/07/yampah-perideridia-americana-more/
It sounds like the person who wrote the article has a lot of experience with it, and has eaten it.
Yea it very likely is. Do you feel your Skirret even needs the extra diversity? I’m wondering if some Chromosome adnormality will happen that may cause root enlargement? It happend with 2 Wild Quinoa species that made bigger seeds, could or is something like that likely with crossing the 2 skirret species?
Yea, I’d probably do the same but also bring additional photos on your phone, with side by side photos of all the important ID parts. I’ll make an ID guide when I get to researching Skirret thoroughly, along with all the other Apiaceae Edibles. Still collect some seeds, might be worth sharing in the Serendipity box, I know I’d love some, to grow and ID personally.
Can’t you compost it? The compostion process chemically alters the Toxins, rendering them harmless once it’s finished. Indeed, and Poison Hemlock along with all the other Poisonous Apiaceae.
I feel you, I question if it’s even worth bringing in wild Squash if I can just cross the Domesticated species all together. I have that debate going Back & forth with myself, will a 5 inter-species squash landrace be enough diversity or no? Maybe only if the wild squashes have a unique trait not found in domesticated squashes (Like White Flowers) is it then worth breeding with? But then again with such wide crosses, novel traits are bound to show up like with pepo x maxima x moschata.
That’s the kind of experience from a forager I look for, such a Fantastic find! Thank you for bringing this to my attention.
I would definitely try any skirret seeds I could get my hands on, because more diversity is likely to equate to more resistance to some new insect or disease pest that eventually may show up in my garden. Plus I might find new traits I like. But I’m definitely also going to keep cloning the ones I have, because I like those plants a lot. Not only are they tasty, they’re productive and shade tolerant (in fact, they prefer shade in my hot dry climate). And they’re even polite enough to fully divide themselves into separate crowns that are easy to separate without cutting or tearing anything, which is extremely considerate to gardeners who want to move a few crowns elsewhere!
Your Skirret sounds so Amazing, thank you for the seeds (The polite separating is only gonna make breeding easier with that cloning ability). I wonder how much diveristy exists inside Skirret (Sium sisarum)? Are there actual varieties of the species, is there enough diveristy in that 1 species? Sam thayer said both species have nearly Identical flavor, so not sure if new flavors will arise form the cross. It seems like one is aquatic adapted & the other Dry land adapted. There are however other sium species to explore, they are likely also edible.
Speaking of which, I don’t remember asking if you tried Tender Skirret shoots & Greens yet?
I’ve tried skirret leaves; they tasted similar to carrot leaves, but a little milder, which made them tastier sharp. Skirret roots taste similar to carrot roots, just a little bit milder and sweeter. And they cook so quickly! Carrot roots take forever to get soft – skirret roots will soften into a nice, lovely, carroty root after just a few minutes in the microwave.
You can eat skirret raw too, of course, and it’s nice that way. Just like carrots, except a little milder. But I prefer to eat them cooked, because carrots are a pain in the neck to cook, and skirret is delightfully easy. Of course, they are delicious fried in butter. 
The one downside of skirret is that the older roots tend to get a woody core, and it’s a bit of a pain to pull that out. But the younger roots don’t have that woody core. From what I understand, some cultivars of skirret lack that woody core altogether, and I think that would be an excellent choice for a breeding project.
This is probably a great place to get skirret seeds, whenever he gets them back into stock:
But since they set seeds prodigiously, getting some from other gardeners (like me!) is very feasible, too. 
I love that skirret a) is edible raw and also tasty cooked, and cooks quickly, b) can be dug up, harvested, and replanted (keeping some of those storage roots on the crown; don’t take them all if you want to replant it), c) sets seeds prodigiously, d) splits itself into separate crowns as if begging you to dig it up, divide it, and spread it all over your garden, and e) doesn’t seem to mind being transplanted at all.
Plus it’s perennial, and is happy with shade. The only downside is that it also loves water, so shade is a must in a hot and dry climate. But in shade, with lots of organic material in the soil, it didn’t seem to mind that I only watered it about twice a month, so that was totally reasonable.
What a very eager-to-please garden plant!
Nice! Sam Thayer describes the flavor of Sium suava as Celery x Parsley. So Different species do have different flavors at least for their shoots. I think Sam meant Identical flavor of both species in terms of the root.
NICE! I like the convience of using a microwave. I also tried microwaving carrots, they took a long time & got quite steamy. Since the roots cook so quickly, do you think they could dissolve into a soup veggie?
Is this why they are perennial? Woody roots just simply remain their & don’t die out? Or does the plant recycle roots every 2 years?
Fantastic! Glad there has been some breeding work done with it.
Now is that because shadey spots happen to hold onto water longer or because it actually prefers shade over full sun (Without Judging for drought tolerance)?
I’m also curious, have you tried eating the flowers? I’m sure if the roots & Greens are edible, surely the flowers are also, right? What about the seeds?
Sam Thayer says Skirret is a Polycarpic root vegetable (as opposed to a Monocarpic root veggie, which flowers once then dies like Parsnip, Burdock, Turnip, Carrot, ect) have you noticed this? He also said because of this, ignore plants with basal rosettes & seed after those with shoots/stalks. I’m wondering if this applies to Skirret (Sium sisarum) as well or if it’s only unique to Water Parsnip (Sium suave)?
Also when you harvest roots, how careful do you have to be since they easily break/snap?
In my experience the roots are smaller and much more like thick, but soft, perennial roots vs an annual root crop like a carrot or parsnip. With my clay it usually resulted in breaking the roots even with very careful digging.
Yep, skirret is definitely polycarpic. In fact, I’ve read somewhere it was traditional in England to grow skirret in three patches – one-year-old plants, two-year-old plants, and three-year-old plants. Every year, they would harvest the three-year-old plants, then replant some of the crowns and/or sow all the seeds in the spot where they had been before.
A lot of people do something similar with strawberries (which become less productive after a few years), so I can easily see that working well with skirret as well.
When I harvested mine this fall, I collected all of the seeds, then waited a few months until all the tops of the plants had died off, and dug up the roots. I left half of the roots on the crowns (because the crowns need some left on in order to survive), and replanted some in the same spot and moved the rest to other shady spots all over the garden. It is definitely a plant you can collect seeds from every year and also harvest roots from every year. Which is awesome.
You have to be pretty careful with the roots; they definitely snap easily. They’re more brittle than carrots. They’re also a bit softer in texture than carrots if you want to eat them raw – they’re not nearly as crisp. So you might want to take some care when digging them up. It would probably help a lot to make sure the soil is very moist.
I don’t know if they’d dissolve in a vegetable soup. I am sure they’d make a very nice addition to a vegetable soup. I fully intend to start using them that way once I have enough plants to make a nice large harvest every year.
Yeah, the woody roots don’t die out. They just keep getting bigger. And it’s only the core that gets woody – the rest of the mass (about 75%) stays a nice tasty root.
I don’t know if they prefer full shade or just don’t mind it. I just know that they want consistently moist soil, and the only way that’s reasonable in my summers is in full shade. What I can report is that the one plant I had in mostly shade produced more than the two plants I had in mostly sun. I think they were all clones, so it’s unlikely that was a genotypical difference.
My advice is that, if “moist soil” and “full sun” are irreconcilable opposites in your climate, give them full shade – full shade doesn’t seem to bother them, and moist soil pleases them a lot. In places where moist soil and full sun are easily compatible, that may be worth experimenting.
