Botanical name:

Apium prostratum subsp. prostratum var. filiforme

Common name(s):

New Zealand Celery

About:

A sprawling, fleshy herb with broad to narrow divided leaves, resembling the common celery plant. Apium prostratum, known as tutae koau or sea celery, was traditionally eaten by Māori and served as an important vegetable for early explorers and settlers. Captain Cook consumed sea celery at Botany Bay and gathered it in large quantities, along with Lepidium oleraceum, at Poverty Bay, New Zealand, in October 1769 to help prevent scurvy among his crew.

Natural habitat:

Coastal and lowland. Very rarely montane. Common on rock ledges, boulder falls, cliff faces, within petrel scrub on damp seepages, in peaty turf, salt marshes, within estuaries on mud banks, around brackish ponds, and lagoons. Also found in freshwater systems such as around lake and tarn sides, along streams and rivers and in wet hollows occasionally well inland, and sometimes at considerable elevations.

Growing environment:

Salt, Wetland, Wind & Coastal tolerant.

Endemic distribution:

In New Zealand known from the Kermadec, Three Kings, North, South, Stewart and Antipodes Islands. Also in eastern Australia as far north as Brisbane and along the whole coastline of southern Australia and Tasmania

Height: 30cm

Flowering: 

August - March with a cream – yellow coloured flower/s

Fruiting:

September - July

Uses:

Bird food / Attractant, Bee food, Riparian plantings, Wetland’s, Container friendly

How to grow:

Easily grown from fresh seed and whole plants. Being edible and pleasant tasting it could be more widely used as a substitute for celery.

** Seed germinates without pre treatment. Sow seed direct & keep moist until germination is complete.