Umbrels Among the Herbs

It's summer, and the herb garden has started to hoist its umbrellas. That is, some members of a plant family called the Umbelliferae are entering a period of bloom. They were given their Latin name, derived from the same root as the word umbrella ("little shade"), because their flowers form a parasol-like shape called an umbel. Hence the family name translates as umbel bearers. Think of Queen Anne's lace, the wild carrot plant that fathered our modern ones. Its classic umbel is a lush, slightly concave dome. Others, such as those of chervil and sweet cicely, are smaller and daintier.

Look closely at an umbel and you'll see that it is composed of a cluster of stems, each with a smaller umbel at the tip. Dill's yellow flowers show this very clearly. Angelica's umbels are almost spherical, a ball made up of balls.

Some biennial Umbelliferae rarely bloom in the garden because they are grown for their enlarged taproots (carrot and parsnip), enlarged stem bases (bulb fennel) or stems (stalk fennel and celery). Others, such as dill, cilantro and parsley, bloom all too readily, and diligent gardeners snip leaves from the plants until they bolt, then pull them and sow more.

There are good reasons, however, to let some umbels sprout forth. They protect nothing from sun or rain but are little helipads where insects land and fuel up on nectar. These include bees -- which give the family its alternate botanical name, Apiaceae -- and other beneficial visitors such as pest-eating wasps and flies. The flowers are lovely, too, and make great filler for bouquets.

You can also harvest the seeds that form from the flowers, many of which are excellent in cooking. Caraway's seed is more potent than its foliage, lending a distinctive flavor to breads and curries or jazzing up a vegetable such as cauliflower. Seeds from celery and the similarly flavored lovage provide a celery taste in wintertime. Seeds from cumin, anise and fennel are mainstays of cuisines around the world.

With cilantro, the seed taste is so different from the leaf taste that it has another name: coriander. Bolted dill has a host of uses, not only for the seed but for the flower itself. Slip an entire great umbel into each jar of home-canned pickles. Use any of these seeds in bread, biscuits and muffins. Make your own curry blends and rubs. Use them to flavor liqueurs. They are simple to collect: Just wait until the seeds turn brown, then shake the umbels in a paper bag.

Seeds may also be saved for replanting the next spring, but some, notably dill and cilantro, self-sow brilliantly. Last year's dill blossoms have given me a dill lawn, the tiny seedlings so thickly cast they clothe the earth with green fur. I've been thinning them by snipping with scissors and adding them to salads, new potatoes, smoked salmon. Some will eventually make umbrellas from which seeds will rain down again.