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Eryngium foetidum L.

Synonym	:	Eryngium antihystericum Rottler.
Family	:	Apiaceae
Local name	:	English- African-malli Malayalam- Long coriander
Flowering and fruiting period	:	February-November
Distribution	:	Indigenous to Central America; introduced and sometimes cultivated in Tropical Africa and Tropical and Subtropical Asia
Distribution in Kerala	:	Kannur, Thrissur, Malappuram, Wayanad, Kozhikkode, Palakkad, Idukki, Kollam, Thiruvananthapuram
Habitat	:	Cultivated
Endemic/Exotic	:	Exotic
Uses	:	An ethnomedicinal plant for the treatment of a number of ailments such as fevers, chills, vomiting, burns, fevers, hypertension, headache, earache, stomachache, asthma, arthritis, snake bites, scorpion stings, diarrhea, malaria and epilepsy.
Key botanical characters:    An erect biennial herb 15-40 cm tall, strongly aromatic, its odour similar to that of coriander with furrowed stems, a short rootstock and fibrous roots. Leaves oblanceolate-oblong in outline, 4-12 cm long and 1-2.5 cm wide, apex obtuse, margins crenate to finely spinosely serrate, base cuneate, sessile and glabrous. Flowers greenish, borne in dense, rounded cymes; involucral bracts 5-7, linear-lanceolate, 1-3 cm long and 3-7 mm wide, greatly exceeding the flower heads, leaf-like, spreading and reflexed with a few spiny teeth; flower heads cylindrical, 4-10 mm long and 3-5 mm broad, terminal on the branches or on short peduncles in the forks, sepals erect, lanceolate, longer than the petals, persistent, apex acute; petals greenish-white, oblanceolate to obovate, erect, clawed. Fruit globose or ovoid, 1-1.5 mm long, compressed, densely papillose.