Thank you again to Cliff aka The Marmot@Flickr for sharing today's photograph (original | BPotD Flickr Group Pool).
Basil is native to Africa and southeast Asia. Its culinary use as a herb in southeast Asia dates back over five thousand years.
Whenever a spice is featured on BPotD, I almost always recommend visiting Gernot Katzer's Spice Pages for the best overview of the plant, and today is no exception: basil. Other resources you may wish to investigate include Ocimum basilicum via MissouriPlants.com (for photos or a quick read), Purdue University's New Crop Factsheet for basil regarding its crop use, or Wikipedia for an overview including cultural aspects of the herb.
The photo captures the luscious shade of green - I can almost taste it.
I shall taste some this evening with some organic tomatoes .........
yummy!
Thia a lovely photograph of Baisl and it is a Herb I use often.
Thank you,
Margaret-Rae
Just left Greece, where basıl ıs used mostly for ornamental-not culınary puposes. Had to restraın myself from pluckıng a leaf from a pot and crushıng ıt. By the way, the text may look funny due to the dıfference wıth the turkısh keyboards.
Ian
The photo really captures the beauty of basil and the fond memories of pesto making and eating in Italy. Wonderful!