Bay laurel
Laurus nobilis
Family · Lauraceae · Harmless
Read this before the sheet
This plant, or one that resembles it, is dangerous. Identifying is not authorising: no app has the authority to tell you that you may eat or touch a plant.
Emergency
The kitchen leaf, on an evergreen shrub or tree that survives in damp valleys and old gardens. One rubbed leaf settles the identification at once.
Oak woods · Streams and ditches · Walls and rocks · Town and roadside
Also known assweet bay, true laurel
How to tell it
A leathery, dark, glossy leaf with a slightly wavy margin and an unmistakable smell when broken. Black oval fruit in autumn.
What it is confused with
Cherry laurel
Prunus laurocerasus
A dangerous and common garden confusion: cherry laurel has a bigger, broader leaf that does not smell of the kitchen, and the plant contains cyanogenic compounds. True bay always smells.
What it is for
A seasoning across Europe and North Africa, and the victor's crown since ancient Greece. The leaf is used fresh or dried, always removed before serving.
Traditionally used as food. This is not permission to eat it.
With documented traditional uses. Not a therapeutic indication and not a dose.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
Community
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