Herb

From open-encyclopedia.com - the free encyclopedia.

This article is about the plants used in cooking and medicine. For the New Zealand reggae band, see Herbs (band).

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A herb (pronounced "urb" in American English and "hurb" in British English) is a plant grown for culinary or medicinal value. Typically, the green, leafy part of the plant is used. General usage differs between culinary herbs and medicinal herbs. A medicinal herb may be a shrub or other woody plant, whereas a culinary herb is a non-woody plant. By contrast, spices are the seeds, berries, bark, root, or other parts of the plant, even leaves in some cases and is only a culinary term. Culinary herbs are distinguished from vegetables in that they are used in small quantities and provide flavor rather than substance to food.

In botany, a herb is a plant that does not produce a woody stem, or is a plant that dies back to the ground at the end of the growing season. The term herbaceous means either having the characteristic of a herb or being leaf-like in color and texture. A related term is Forb, which means a non-woody plant that is not a grass and is not grass-like. This means that the term forb excludes sedges (Cyperaceae) and rushes (Juncaceae) along with grasses (Poaceae).

"Herb" or "the herb" is also a term for cannabis (some Rastafarians believe it is actually the most correct term).