Chinese Celery

Also cutting celery, leaf celery, soup celery smallage; qin cai and kan tsai (Chinese)

There are three distinct forms of cultivated celery (Apium graveolens), although there is disagreement about their scientific names. The crunchy, thick-stalked form (usually called the dulce variety) is most common in North America. The gnarly-bulbed celery root, rapaceum is a second form. The slender-stalked, leafy type pictured here is the form closest to wild celery.

As is often the case, Joy Larkcom sums up the basics in her invaluable Oriental Vegetables, making a further distinction between Chinese and cutting celeries. “Chinese celery probably evolved from a wild form of Asian celery. It bears a remarkable resemblance to the ‘leaf,’ ‘green,’ ‘cutting,’ or ‘soup’ celery still grown in Europe as a herb—itself not far removed from the wild European celery. Both are hardier and generally more robust than the long-stemmed trench celery and self-blanching celery, which have usurped them as table vegetables in Europe and America.” It is curious that the old form of celery should be maintained in America only as “Chinese celery,” but in any case, unless you grow it yourself, you can now find it exclusively in Oriental markets, as far as I can determine.