Weed

Perilla. It is likely the most widespread annual weed in Eureka Springs, arriving in the United States in the mid-1950s. Ah, I called it a weed and you tucked it away in your mind as a plant with an attitude.

Call it by the Japanese name, shiso; you are likely to pay $2 a pot for it at a nursery as an annual Asian herb or vegetable. In Japan, a garnish like parsley, shiso is also a fresh flavoring ingredient.

I was amazed riding from the airport to downtown Seoul, South Korea, seeing acres of it planted in flat expansive fields. There, the varieties grown are a little more carefully selected for flavor than our annual weedy perilla.

Any Korean grocery (a couple in Fayetteville) offers carefully selected whole perilla leaves preserved in oil in sardine cans, also used in Korean cuisine as a garnish and flavoring, and fresh bunches are offered as a vegetable.

I've seen plantings of selections chosen for flavor in trial plantings at Rutgers University in New Jersey, acquired on a Korean graduate student's visit home. The fresh herb was destined for New York Asian markets.

It's the annual member of the mint family called, Perilla frutescens. The genus Perilla, represented by a single species, is also known in common parlance as perilla. Just like basils, perilla comes in shades of bright green to deep maroon. The flavor and fragrance -- piquant, oily, and thick, with an overtone that nips the nose -- can only be described as that of perilla.

The seed oil is used for making cheap lacquers and paints. The oil is glossier, tougher, harder, of greater durability, more water resistant than linseed oil and it dries in about a third the time; yet it yellows, cracks, and shrivels when exposed to heat.

The sounds of a walk through a patch of dried perilla gone-to-seed on any old abandoned Ozark road earned it the name rattlesnake weed. In China, those dried seed tops are called zi-su-geng, used in prescriptions in Traditional Chinese Medicine for abdominal fullness and distention, stagnation of vital energy, difficulty in digesting food, morning sickness, and excessive fetal movement.

A strong tea of dried leaves, combined with three large slices of fresh ginger, then drunk frequently, is given as an antidote for discomfort from eating too much crab meat or fish. The juice of the fresh leaves is sipped and poulticed to treat snakebites. Oh yes, and then there's the component in the fresh leaves that's 2,000 times sweeter than sugar. Potential toxicity has thwarted commercial development.

Still, perilla is a weed.

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