Parsley of Macedon

Not quite a native, alexanders can taste like joss stick-tainted celery or sweetly spiced parsnips, depending on your method, warns John Wright

- Kateryna Kyslitska

FROM late winter through spring, one plant boorishly dominates the grass verges of Britain's coastal roads: alexanders (Smyrnium olusatrum). At a little under 5ft tall, it is a statuesque plant with bright yellow-green leaves. It grows among roadside grasses, on banks and sometimes at the edges of woods. Wherever it grows, it seems to take over, even replacing the related and otherwise ubiquitous cow parsley.

Alexanders is in the carrot family, the Apiaceae, its thousands of florets born on multiple and distinctly spherical umbellets situated on the umbels. As are most of its cousins, alexanders is biennial, producing a basal rosette of leaves and a substantial root during the first year, then the familiar tall plant with its bright-yellow flowers and very black seeds the next. It flowers from April to May and sets seed from July to August.