Fitweed

fitweed or culantro, Eryngium foetidum, a plant with edible leaves which originated in tropical America but was introduced successfully to parts of E. and SE Asia and is now of some importance there too. The unpleasant buglike smell which it gives off, reminiscent of coriander, has earned it other names such as stinkweed (stinkdistel in Dutch) and false coriander. The name culantro, being also and originally the Spanish for (true) coriander, can itself be a source of confusion. Morton (1976) points out that it is for this reason that ‘West Indian cooks tag the name culantro with de burro, del monte, de coyote or de cimarron’.