Talk:Perilla (culinary)

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Untitled[edit]

Would some Wikipedian please add photos of shiso so those of us new to it can identify it in Asian markets? I keep finding something very close to it here in San Diego California, in such markets; however, even though the English tags call it a 'basil' or a 'mint' the rest of the tags are in Thai, Vietnamese or Tagalog since these markets are geared mostly to people from SE Asia. Thanks.

species vs genus[edit]

This article is (was) about the species for which Perilla is also the common name. Rather than changing the article, how about moving it to Shiso and creating a new one for the genus? -- WormRunner | Talk 17:49, 1 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

It seems User:Ricardo Carneiro Pires has already made a Perilla frutescens article, which is a bit unfortunate since the interlanguage links are now split between the two articles. Most people will not realise there is a Japanese article on the subject. I suggest we either
  1. insist that the culinary use article be considered the species article (which would either mean reverting Perilla frutescens to be a redirect toward Perilla, or moving the current content of Perilla to Perilla frutescens), or
  2. we use interlanguage links indiscriminately if they only exist for either genus or species.
Wikipeditor 16:22, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Can skin contact with perilla cause dermatitis?[edit]

This here kibotext says there are Japanese pickled perilla buds/blossoms (as opposed to leaves or seed), and that leaves are called ohba (is this the article's aoba?). More interestingly, it says:

"I'm told cows won't eat wild perilla, and Asian workers who harvest perilla often get dermatitis from it."

Can anybody confirm this? – Wikipeditor 22:33, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I really doubt it. My mum recently picked a lot of perilla, but her hands are fine. You could say Korean perilla could might be different from Japanese perilla — a friend of mine who has lived in both Korea and Japan tells me they taste totally different — but I doubt it would be consumed in Japan if it can cause apparent health problems. --Kjoonlee 16:30, 9 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Right. If it irritated your hand, it would irritate your mouth as well. Besides, I notice the chemistry section already informs the reader about the bovine consumption issue. Wikipeditor 16:22, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Additional photo[edit]

Shiso, potted

I have an additional photo available, showing growth form. It is included here, feel free to add to the article if useful. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 15:23, 23 December 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Species[edit]

I'm afraid we need the help of an expert to insert a list of species into the article:

The commercial vendor [1] and the pop-up menu at [2] list many species, [3] lists "Perilla arguta; Perilla frutescens; Perilla fruticosa; Perilla nankinensis; Perilla ocimoides" and hort.purdue.edu says "[Apart from Perilla frutescens (L.) Britton, t]hree other Perilla species are recognized by some authorities, but the distinctions are ambiguous, and a taxonomic revision is needed." :( Wikipeditor 16:22, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Korea[edit]

I think there needs to be a source on "it is also known to cause disruption of lung and cancer". That's a pretty egregious claim

Agreed. I removed it pending a reference. --ChrisRuvolo (t) 11:38, 25 July 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Perilla oil is used in a lot of different dishes in Korea. Why specifically mention dog meat soup at the end of the section? This last part doesn't really go with the rest of the section either. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.118.132.202 (talk) 17:23, 24 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I think the english transliteration of "깻잎" is wrong. The transliteration is listed as "ggaennip" which would imply that there is an "ㄴ" (which is equivalent to the 'n' consonant) or two in the spelling, but there is not. I'm pretty sure the proper transliteration should be 'ggaetip" according to revised romanization, but it pronounced more like 'ggaesip' (where the 'si' makes a 'shi' sound in Korean). [1] 173.66.22.6 (talk) 15:00, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Please go ahead and make any changes you think appropriate. The Hangul was first presented in this article with kkaennip as the Romanization. It safe to say that most (but not all) people who have edited this article have little knowledge of Korean and aren't able to catch errors of this kind. If you know Korean, please fix it.Plantdrew (talk) 16:04, 5 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No, actually "kkaennip" is the correct Romanization that reflects the correct sound. In Korean, when a compound word is formed when the second word starts with /i/ (ㅣ) sound (or the /j/ semivowel), sometimes the /n/ sound is inserted in the middle. (And confusingly it is sometimes denoted by the "ㅅ" character, as is the case here.) E.g., 나뭇잎 namunnip, 앞니 (<- 앞 + 이) amni, 한여름 hannyeoreum (note that n became nn) or the 학여울 subway station in Seoul which is written as Hangnyeoul. 24.6.173.129 (talk) 21:55, 17 August 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Indonesia[edit]

This is completely different from kemangi, which is Lemon basil. I don't know if Perilla is common in Indonesia at all.

Agreed, I can't find any sources on the net asserting that selasih/kemangi is perilla, and I've never seen perilla in Indonesia (outside Japanese restaurants!). I've removed it. Jpatokal (talk) 04:47, 12 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This article talk page was automatically added with {{WikiProject Food and drink}} banner as it falls under Category:Food or one of its subcategories. If you find this addition an error, Kindly undo the changes and update the inappropriate categories if needed. The bot was instructed to tagg these articles upon consenus from WikiProject Food and drink. You can find the related request for tagging here . If you have concerns , please inform on the project talk page -- TinucherianBot (talk) 11:41, 3 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

AKA "sesame leaves"[edit]

I was reading a blog about Korean cooking (maangchi.com) where she refers to shiso in "kkaen nip jang ah jji" as "sesame leaves." At first I was confused, because I grow sesame as a midsummer cover crop in my garden, and sesame leaves look nothing like her pictures! So after a search, I learned kkaennip is actually shiso. Is the translation as "sesame leaves" common in the Korean community? If so, it could be listed with the other misnomers in the lead paragraph. 24.250.232.53 (talk) 05:54, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oops, disregard that comment, seeing as how I completely missed the whole paragraph on Korean usage. On the other hand, if it's that common, maybe it should be mentioned in the lead. 24.250.232.53 (talk) 05:57, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

On interwiki links[edit]

I'm sorting out interwiki links between this perilla-related articles across wikis:

  • articles about genus Perilla
  • articles about species Perilla frutescens
  • articles about subspecies Perilla frutescens var. japonica known as 들깨(deulggae) in Korea and エゴマ(egoma) in Japan
  • articles about subspecies Perilla frutescens var. crispa known in Japan as シソ(shiso) and 소엽(soyeop) in Korea

My bot's removals of some interwiki links[4][5] seem inappropriate at first, but the deleted links are about the genus Perilla -- they're about single species or subspeices belonging to Perilla, which makes them inequivalent to be linked each other. (Should've done it manually at the first time though.)

--Puzzlet Chung (talk) 10:30, 23 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Retooled the page into an herbs & spices or food page[edit]

I retooled this page into "Perilla (herb & spices)" type page. That was mostly what is about anyway. Leave to others if name change is in order.
Hopefully with this implemented change, contributors will revise the genus page, species page, or herb-related page as relevant, avoiding the mix up.
I set up a Perilla (genus) page separately. The /*Chemistry*/ section as it existed from here to the Perilla (genus) page and documented the revision histories, and the one here was made slimmer(?), less techie. May eventually get around to improving shiso article, spun off as a stub--Kiyoweap (talk) 22:38, 1 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wait... what? Merge(s) badly needed[edit]

There are now three separate pages – perilla, perilla frutescens, shiso – describing the exact same plant and attempts to branch off a variant as a separate page to itself. That's nuts.

At the very least this "herb" page needs to be merged back to the "herb" page shiso inasmuch as their purported content completely overlap (P. frutescens as used in cooking & medicine in an East Asian context). Then we can do arguments why that can't simply be a subsection of the main article on the plant itself. — LlywelynII 22:46, 12 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Being the one who spun off shiso as a separate article on what I think are legitimate enough grounds, I beg to differ with Mr. LlywelynII's hasty conclusion that the species and the shiso varieties (or subspecies, if you will) are "the exact same plant. As explained in articles, P. frutescens encomapass two major varieties, the shiso and the oilseed variety. They go by different names in Japan and Korea. (An earlier Talk topic above mentions that two separate articles exist in these languages).
The two varieties are not interchangeable, because the distinct shiso aroma is not present in the "wild sesame" variety. If you lump them together, you may trick a reader into buying perilla from the Korean market, and try to make "shiso julep" out of it, which would be a disservice.
I think some people try to institute this one species one page rule, but it is not practicable to apply this homogeneous rule equally for a wildflower and a widely cutivated species alike. By the same token, you would be saying "Cucurbita pepo, Spaghetti squash, Acorn squash, zuchini" need badly to be merged, or Welsh Corgi and Irish setter are the same canine, they need to be merged. So I rest my case. Kiyoweap (talk) 10:23, 14 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]


Wow. This is a mess. I appreciate the need to distinguish between the leafy vegetable and the oilcrop (with the oilcrop also being used as a leafy vegetable, although apparently only in Korea). However, there really isn't all that much content at the 3 articles mentioned above, or perilla oil which is also relevant here. I see no reason why they couldn't all be merged into a longer Perilla frutescens (with appropriate mention of the fact that the oilseed variety is also used as a leafy vegetable in Korea). Barring a merge, titling is difficult. Shiso seems to be the best English title for the variety widely used as a vegetable. While Japanese makes a clear distinction between egoma and shiso, egoma is hardly used in English. Perilla oil covers the oilcrop, and seems to be the best name in English (more common on Google than "egoma oil" and on Google "shiso oil" seems to mostly refer to oils in which shiso leaf has been infused) but perilla oil doesn't cover the oilcrops use as a vegetable in Korea. The title Perilla doesn't really do a good job of distinguishing the varieties at all, and is occupying what should be a straightforward title for the Perilla (genus) article.
As a botanist, it seems pretty clear to me that the oilcrop is Perilla frutescens var. frutescens and the vegetable is P. frutescens var. crispa. P. frutescens var. japonica is ambiguous. It should probably refer to the oilcrop, but is a name mostly ignored by botanists and widely used by chemists to ambiguously refer to (as far as I can tell from Google scholar) both the vegetable and oilcrop varieties. Due to the taxonomic confusion, I'd want to use extreme caution in assigning any reference or statement to separate articles on the the oilcrop, vegetable or species as a whole. For example, the Perilla article has an (unreferenced) section on Cultivation, but there's no way to tell what variety (or the species as a whole)it applies to.
Merge shiso, perilla and perilla oil into Perilla frutescens]. Move Perilla (genus to Perilla. If future expansions to the Perilla frutescens merit splitting articles, the widely used leafy vegetable should be at Shiso, the oilcrop should be at Perilla oil, and Korean use of the oilcrop as a vegetable should be mentioned on both the articles for Perilla frutscens and Perilla oil. Is that OK?Plantdrew (talk) 03:10, 26 September 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Another merge suggestion after four years[edit]

Four years ago, there were three pages related to "perilla", but now there are five.

I made the page for Korean perilla(deulkkae), which is indeed not the exact same plant as the Japanese perilla(shiso). So Perilla (plant) is a genus, Perilla frutescens is a species, and the two varieties of the species used in Korea and Japan are subspecies.

But what is perilla? For me, it seems like nothing but the umbrella term used for the two subspecies of Perilla frutescens. I suggest that perilla be merged into Perilla frutescens.

--Diospireiro (talk) 10:21, 30 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Sminthopsis84: But is perilla "a" product? I don't think the kkaennip and shiso are considered "a" herb. In the case of coffee vs Coffea arabica, the former is a drink and the latter is a plant. But what product is a "perilla"? It can be shiso(which has a page dedicated to it), deulkkae seeds or kkaennip(which also have a page dedicated to them), perilla oil(which again has a page dedicated to it), etc. --Diospireiro (talk) 17:23, 30 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
It seems to me that this article is really about the uses of perilla LEAF in various cultures (with a couple mentions of perilla oil which has its own article already). Maybe the genus and its only species should be at perilla, and (if there is really any need to have a separate article about the leaves as a product) this article should be at perilla leaf. Plantdrew (talk) 05:53, 1 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support the move to "perilla leaf" - Though I was planning to add more paragraphs on the usage of perilla seed powder. I'll postpone the plan till the end of this merge/move discussion! The reason this article is mostly about the uses of perilla leaves might be that many people who contributed to this article are from Japan, where only the leaves are widely consumed. But moving this article to "perilla leaf" sounds like a good idea. At least it's less ambiguous. If this page becomes "perilla leaf", will the page perilla (disambiguation) become "perilla"? --Diospireiro (talk) 13:25, 1 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I'd prefer to see the genus article at the "perilla" title; I think it likely qualifies as the primary topic. Plantdrew (talk) 17:21, 1 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

In my opinion, forcing different Perilla articles into a merged single article will be tricky, even daunting, to keep organized and readable.

Also, I dont think you can decisively argue the genus page should be Perilla. Therefore I support making Perilla a disambiguation article. That should eliminate much of the confusion due to multiple articles existing.

Perilla (plant) could be renamed Perilla (genus). It's pretty close to the typical "genus" article like theCoffea example that Sminthopsis84 brought up.

Renaming Perilla → Perilla leaf seems tolerable a stop gap solution. But we eventually want something like Perilla (herbs & spices) since it isnt only the leaf, but seed as well, as user:Diospireiro noted. --Kiyoweap (talk)

If perilla becomes perilla leaf, I'm willing to make an article named perilla seed(which now redirects to "perilla"). Then there will be perilla oil, perilla leaf, and perilla seed for the culinary products. For me, having three separate articles on oil, leaf, and seed seems like a better option (compared to having one perilla (herbs & spices)) since we already have the perilla (disambiguation) page anyway. (Also I don't think Plantdrew "decisively argue"d that the genus page should be Perilla. Her/his words look like a suggestion to me, just like the other comments here do.) --Diospireiro (talk) 06:07, 2 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support merge. Sorry, I think I got confused earlier, and I'm going to have to retract and correct my stance.
New articles such as Perilla leaf or Perilla seed should definitely not be created.
Those content should go to shiso or wild sesame (Deulkkae).
The firtst 4 of 5 articles in the hierarchy listed above is enough (genus, species, cultivar1, cultivar2 articles).
Perilla's contents need to be merged into the other 4, after which it can be the disambiguation article.--Kiyoweap (talk) 08:23, 3 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't carefully read Diospireiro's initial posting, and convinced myself this was about merging everything. My bad. he said "perilla be merged into Perilla frutescens", and that I support. --Kiyoweap (talk) 08:33, 3 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that the article "perilla leaf" will again be ambiguous. It will cover two (or possibly more) types of perilla leaves, and the paragraphs about the two types is very likely to be the duplicates of the "culinary use of the leaf" sections of deulkkae and shiso articles. The case of "perilla oil" is a bit different because it's made of var. frutescens only. I think the "perilla seeds" used in cooking are also of var. frutescens only. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.) Only the perilla leaf page will be ambiguous (among the existing and possible perilla product pages mentioned above). But if we do move "perilla" to "perilla leaf" we should keep either the perilla leaf page or the "culinary use of the leaf" sections of both var. frutescens and var. crispa simple. I'm okay with both of the options. --Diospireiro (talk) 14:04, 3 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I wouldn't say Perilla seeds is P. frutecens only. Even though "shiso seeds only" aren't really used or marketed in Japanese cuisine that I'm aware of, "shiso berries" (shiso no mi) are common, and that's basically the seeds with the green husks still on them. --Kiyoweap (talk) 11:02, 5 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Perilla (genus) + Perilla frutescens (species) → Perilla frutescens (genus and species)[edit]

Reason: Wikipedia naming custom on monotypic genera

  • Suggested by:Plantdrew
    • It seems like no one disagrees on this merge. Let's get it done! --Diospireiro (talk) 14:04, 3 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Currently Perilla (genus) is a redirect page. If this means "Perilla (plant) + Perilla frutescens (species)", it's identical to the suggestion below.--Salatonbv (talk) 20:45, 3 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Perilla (plant) + Perilla frutescens (genus and species) → Perilla frutescens (genus and species)[edit]

Reason: The use of different perilla leaves as herb are better dealt in the articles deulkkae and shiso.

Perilla (herb) → perilla leaf[edit]

Reason: This article seems to be about the use of different perilla leaves.

  • Suggested by: Plantdrew
  • Disagreed by: Kiyoweap
  • Other: Diospireiro is okay with it, though she likes the merge(plant + genus and species) better.
  • Comment: I suggested it, I think it's better to move the content here to other articles. Plantdrew (talk) 18:44, 3 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Perilla (plant) was originally Perilla (genus) (when I worked on it in 2012) but it was renamed by somebody in 13 Sep 2014 (probably to distinguish from the Perilla genus of spider.)
In Talk:Perilla (plant)#Merge, Sminthopsis84 pointed that the 2008 source that lists three wild species (P. citriodora, P. hirtella, and P. setoyensis) is old, since the two of these are synonyms of P. frutescens according to The Plant List (2012) maintained by Kew Gardens. But it states P. setoyensis as "unresolved".
And an online publication Marc J. C. Fischer et al. (2013) [6], concedes on "P. frutescens var. hirtella" being a synonym, still refers to P. citriodora and P. setoyensis as species.
Yan Hu et al. (2010) doi:10.1111 while saying Perilla genus is monotypic, notes there are "unresolved controversies concerning the classification". So for WP:NPOV, I think it's better to keep the Perilla (genus) article, stating that a number of authorities consider this monotypic, that "wild species" are still mentioned in academic literature. --Kiyoweap (talk) 23:24, 5 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Support merge. The bulk of the information on this will be redundant, and eventually contradictory. Differences between varieties and various cultural uses will enrich the single article. :Kortoso (talk) 00:16, 13 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]