Celery

Celery
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Plantae
(unranked):	Angiosperms
(unranked):	Eudicots
(unranked):	Asterids
Order:	Apiales
Family:	Apiaceae
Genus:	Apium
Species:	A. graveolens
Binomial name
Apium graveolens L.
Synonyms
Apium graveolens subsp. dulce (Mill.) Schübl. & G. Martens

Celery (Apium graveolens), a marshland plant in the family Apiaceae, has been cultivated as a vegetable since antiquity. Celery has a long fibrous stalk tapering into leaves. Depending on location and cultivar, either its stalks, leaves, or hypocotyl are eaten and used in cooking.

Celery seed is also used as a spice; its extracts are used in medicines.

Celery leaves are pinnate to bipinnate with rhombic leaflets 3–6 cm (1.2–2.4 in) long and 2–4 cm broad. The flowers are creamy-white, 2–3 mm in diameter, and are produced in dense compound umbels. The seeds are broad ovoid to globose, 1.5–2 mm long and wide. Modern cultivars have been selected for solid petioles, leaf stalks. A celery stalk readily separates into "strings" which are bundles of angular collenchyma cells exterior to the vascular bundles.

First attested in English in 1664, the word "celery" derives from the French céleri, in turn from Italian seleri, the plural of selero, which comes from Late Latin selinon, the latinisation of the Greek σέλινον (selinon), "celery". The earliest attested form of the word is the Mycenaean Greek se-ri-no, written in Linear B syllabic script.

Celery was described by Carl Linnaeus in Volume One of his Species Plantarum in 1753.

Wild celery, Apium graveolens var. graveolens, grows to 1 m (3.3 ft) tall.

The plants are raised from seed, sown either in a hot bed or in the open garden according to the season of the year, and, after one or two thinnings and transplantings, they are, on attaining a height of 15–20 cm (5.9–7.9 in), planted out in deep trenches for convenience of blanching, which is effected by earthing up to exclude light from the stems.