Plant · P-351

Earth Chestnut

Bunium bulbocastanum

Earth Chestnut is a small underground tuber crop that grows through the cool months and goes dormant in summer, much like garlic or another Mediterranean bulb - planted in fall, it flowers and sets seed by late spring before disappearing underground for the hot season. The tuber itself tastes like sweet chestnut when cooked, but it is small and fiddly to dig, so the more reliable yields are the seed, used as a cumin substitute known elsewhere as black cumin, and the leaves, used fresh much like parsley. It is unusually tolerant of alkaline soil for a food crop - it grows wild on chalk banks - though the ground needs to drain well, since a dormant summer tuber sitting in wet clay will rot.