Eden Apothecary · Herb Profile
Petroselinum crispum (Mill.) Fuss
Pronounced Parsley: PARS-lee. Petroselinum crispum: pet-roh-seh-LY-num KRIS-pum.
Warm, dry, and draining: an aromatic stimulant diuretic that flushes stagnant water from cold, boggy kidneys and warms and moves a sluggish, congested pelvis.
Culinary amounts (leaf as food and garnish) are recognized as safe. Avoid all medicinal and concentrated amounts during pregnancy: the German Commission E lists pregnancy as a contraindication, and the seed, the essential oil, and their isolated apiole and myristicin are documented uterine stimulants used historically as emmenagogues and abortifacients, with recorded cases of severe maternal poisoning and death from apiol taken to end pregnancy. Do not use parsley seed, essential oil, or concentrated extracts in pregnancy. Sources: German Commission E (Petroselini herba and radix); AHPA Botanical Safety Handbook, 2nd ed.; Brinker, Herb Contraindications and Drug Interactions.
Food amounts are compatible with nursing. Avoid medicinal and large amounts: parsley is a traditional anti-galactagogue and is combined with sage in commercial preparations sold to reduce or dry up milk, so therapeutic doses may lower supply in a mother wishing to maintain it. The NIH LactMed database notes there are no data on the excretion of parsley constituents into breast milk and warns that the essential oil should not be used because of the toxicity of its apiole and myristicin. Sources: NIH LactMed (Drugs and Lactation Database), Parsley; AHPA Botanical Safety Handbook, 2nd ed.
Food amounts are safe (parsley is GRAS as a food). No therapeutic dose is established for young children, and the apiole-rich seed and the essential oil must never be given internally to infants or children because of their toxicity. A dilute leaf tea in small amounts follows ordinary culinary tradition; reserve medicinal diuretic and emmenagogue use for adults. Sources: NIH LactMed; AHPA Botanical Safety Handbook (culinary and GRAS status).
Draw a sharp line between food and medicine. Parsley as a leaf, garnish, and potherb is safe, but the seed, the essential oil, and the isolated constituents apiole and myristicin are toxic in quantity, with documented poisonings and deaths (notably from apiol taken to procure abortion) causing gastrointestinal, hepatic, renal, and neurological harm. Never take the essential oil internally. The volatile oil and the furanocoumarins (bergapten, psoralen, xanthotoxin) can provoke phototoxic and contact dermatitis, especially with heavy or occupational handling. Avoid medicinal doses in kidney inflammation and in pregnancy (see the dedicated safety fields).
Pregnancy in medicinal amounts (seed, oil, apiole, and concentrated extracts). Acute or inflammatory kidney disease (nephritis), and edema arising from impaired heart or kidney function, for which Commission E specifically contraindicates irrigation therapy. Known allergy to Apiaceae plants (carrot, celery, fennel, dill, anise), which cross-react. Internal use of the isolated essential oil at any time.
Not at-risk. Parsley is a cultivated biennial grown worldwide as a kitchen herb and commercial crop, not wild-harvested from threatened populations, and it is not listed by United Plant Savers. It is easily grown at home from seed; prefer organically grown leaf, root, and seed.
Not named in canonical Scripture. Parsley is native to the central and eastern Mediterranean and was well known to the Greeks and Romans: Dioscorides (De Materia Medica, petroselinon, rock-parsley) and Pliny describe it as a diuretic and emmenagogue, and the Greeks wove it into funeral wreaths and into the victors' crowns of the Isthmian and Nemean games. The name petroselinon means rock-celery, from petra (rock) and selinon (celery or parsley).
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