Curry Plant
The Truth about the often Misidentified Curry Plant
To begin, the curry plant is not what the chef uses to make your favorite dish at the Indian restaurant you frequent. The plant does carry the scent of curry and it does have that taste, but it does not pass this taste on to other foods very well, so you could not, for example, use it as a replacement for curry. Despite this, the curry plant does have several uses.
Curry Plant Basics
The scientific name for the curry plant is Helichrysum italicum. A bushy flowering plant, it grows to about two feet in height in open fields and has a dried out bluish grey look. In bloom, it has little clutches of yellow-bunched flowers.
As A Garden Flower and Hedge
Gardeners often use the curry as a garden flower because it grows so well in direct sunlight with relatively little care and because it is a great plant to foreground other more colorful and eye-catching flowers.
Another favorite for gardeners is to place the curry in box hedges to create divisions between sections of their gardens and to define walkways. Gardeners construct box hedges out of wood and fill them with soil to create extra elevation. Often they will add arching trellises at the entrance or end of walkways and let wisteria or the curry itself grow over them to create a quaint old-fashioned effect.
Helichrysum italicum is also recommended as a cat repellent. Although no evidence is presented for its effectiveness, many gardeners suggest that it is interchangeable with the better-known cat repelling the “scaredy-cat plant,” Coleus canina.
Culinary Uses?
Cooks rarely add curry as an ingredient to foods and recipes, and then only in very small amounts because the strong taste can easily overwhelm foods in a most unpleasant manner. You should not however, confuse the curry plant with the curry leaf plant that is, in fact, a frequent ingredient in cooking.
Chefs tend to use our more rare curry more for the flower’s aesthetic appeal than for its taste, if they ever bother to use it at all. In fact, often their reason for using it is a shopping mistake, given the similarity in names between the two curry plants.
Medicinal Uses
Some experts claim the curry plant also has no medicinal uses either. However, companies often convert Helichrysum italicum to an essential oil (dropping any mention of “curry”) and sell it at high prices as a cure for everything from spasm and blood clotting to inflammation and allergies. As an essential oil, marketers often tout its skin replenishing features.
One of the plant’s main uses is as an additive to skin care products. Companies argue for the curry plant’s beneficial effects in helping wounds to heal and claim the curry is a beneficial anti-oxidant helping to fight free-radicals in the blood. For these same reasons, companies sometimes add the curry to skin care products as an agent in reducing the signs of aging. It is also an ingredient in some stretch mark reducing creams.
Companies sometimes claim they would use the plant more often if it were not for its strong odor that supposedly puts off customers.
Whether these beneficial effects are true or not you should judge for yourself. Whenever using an herb or plant for medical purposes, however, you should consult your physician. You never know when a plant or herb may cause a harmful allergic reaction or create a negative drug interaction with chemicals in other medications you may be taking.
In Summation
Put simply, the curry plant’s name often opens it up for a series of mistakes and confusions. It does have some uses although the further you get from a garden setting the more dubious and exaggerated these claims become. If you are going to do anything other than plant with the curry, you should do your homework and make sure that the evidence satisfies you beforehand, and even then, it is a good idea to consult a physician if this use is of a medical nature.