Parsley is a popular and flavourful cooking herb. Aside from its culinary uses, parsley is also highly nutritious and may also possess many health benefits.

As a biennial plant, parsley grows vegetatively for its first season of growth, overwinters, and then flowers in the second season. The compound leaves—deep green, tender, and either flat or deeply frilled (curly)—develop in a cluster the first season; these are harvested for use. Many farmers do not leave parsley plants in the field after their productive leaf season. If left for the second season of growth, seed stalks rise about 1 metre (3.3 feet) tall and are topped by compound umbels of small greenish yellow flowers followed by tiny seedlike fruits, similar to those of a carrot but without spines. Parsley seedlings are small and weak; they emerge with difficulty from heavy crusty soils..