Celery

Wild celery, Apium graveolens, is native across a broad area that includes much of Europe, the Mediterranean basin, North Africa, and western Asia. Unlike the pale, succulent bunches sold today, wild plants tend to have slender stalks and a forceful, sometimes bitter flavor. They thrive in wet or saline soils, a preference still visible in cultivated celery’s demand for abundant water.

Ancient Mediterranean societies knew celery primarily as an aromatic herb and medicinal plant. Its leaves and seeds were valued well before its stalks became a substantial table vegetable. Early references do not necessarily describe modern celery, and they should not be read as proof that today’s thick-stalked form already existed.

The familiar vegetable emerged through prolonged selection in Europe. By the early modern period, growers—particularly in Italy and later elsewhere in western Europe—were favoring plants with broader, less bitter, more tender leaf stalks. Blanching, traditionally achieved by banking soil around the plant or shielding it from light, softened the flavor and lightened the stalks. Related selections produced distinct forms, including leaf celery, stalk celery, and celeriac, which is cultivated for its swollen stem base and upper root.

European settlers carried improved celery to North America, where it became an important market crop. Today California supplies a major share of United States production, with Michigan also significant. Modern varieties may be green or self-blanching, but all remain descendants of a wetland plant transformed by cultivation into a crisp, mild vegetable.