Many American friends, some of them foodies, fail to discriminate herbs and spices. I explain to them that herbs are leaves, and spices are seeds.

But where does this leave saffron, described as a spice tonight by Kate Humble?

If you are going for the Redgrove (1933) definition of herbs generally being the 'herbaceous parts of aromatic plants' and spices 'their dried other parts' (roots, bark, flowers, seeds etc.) saffron would be a spice as the dried stigmas of the crocus. Vanilla would count too as the 'pods'/beans of an orchid.

Winton

Interesting, I hadn't thought of saffron as a spice before! Gernot Katzer also listas it as a spice "The name saffron comes from Arabic, where the spice is known as az-za'fran...", but then it lists chives as a spice too.

Probably the difficulty is we like to pigeon- hole plants as herbs OR spices. To me chives are clearly herbs, put if you put the flowers in a salad they are spices. Similarly coriander leaves are a herb, but the plant's seeds are a spice!

Winton

and then you get Bananas just to confuse people even more :-)

Steve

Thanks, Winton. Cases such as fenugreek (seeds vs leaves) and coriander (seeds vs leaves) fall neatly into the seed/leaf, thus spice/herb, dichotomy. I guess that stamens (that's the part of a flower that has pollen, right?) aren't leaves, exactly, but they aren't seeds, either.

Depends on what 'herbaceous' means.

I cook a Chinese soup which has lilly stamens in it. Are those a spice? Not for me.

Maybe we need to say: spices are seeds, herbs are leaves, and bits of flowers are neither spices nor herbs.

Phil

Going back to Redgrove's definition I'd still go for stamens as being a spice as part of the flower Phil! He did say the spice/herb question was 'insoluble' but his is the best 'working' definition I've come across.

Before we extend it to any plant though we need to quantify we are only writing about 'strongly flavoured' and 'aromatic' plants.

It is a long way forward however from the medieval definitions where 'herbs' seemed to be anything that grew above the ground and 'roots' anything underneath!

Winton