Talk:Basil

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[edit] Rosalind

"A similar story is told of the Longobard queen Rosalind."

Who is this queen Rosalind? I never heard anything about this queen. I wonder if someone for a mistake wrote Rosalind instead of Rosamund the wife of the Lombard King Alboin. Can anyone give a citation or add a few rows about this queen?


[edit] Apostrophes

How odd. Those apostrophes look just like apostrophes to my browser. What did you change? -- Zoe

The character after "Witches" was an invalid character which shows as a square in the font I have set in my browser. In other fonts it looks like a wicket or the upper-right corner of a square or a filled-in rectangle. On Windows these look like apostrophes, quotes, dashes, and a few other things. On Macs, I don't know what they look like, but there's a character that apparently looks like an apostrophe on a Mac and an accented O on Windows and Unix. -phma

[edit] Cultivation

Any hope that someone experienced could explain cultivation here? Shawnb 19:55, 18 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Gave it a go just copied and pasted some thing I wrote a while back for my site, tried to make it so it is usufull to every country.andham2000


Do you think you could possibly rephrase it without using first person ("I bought" etc). It is good information, although not really encyclopedic as it stands. I could give it a go, but at the moment I don't have the time, and I'm also no expert on the subject. / Alarm 06:17, 2 May 2005 (UTC)
I'm afraid that I edited the new material before I saw this discussion. I removed the first-person material, and tidied the style of the rest. It still needs wikifying, and I'll do that when I get a moment. (The one thing that might be added is that basil can be rather temperamental.) Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 10:00, 2 May 2005 (UTC)


Sorry yes I new to Wikipedia, I will ensure that I don't write in 1st person again. [[user:andham2000[andham2000]]

[edit] Poisonous?

Can anyone cite some authority for this assertion that basil is poisonous?

Hmm. I found this article but it just says there may be a problem. I can find nothing to justify so strong a statement, so I am removing it until someone comes up with something more definitive. -- WormRunner | Talk 06:05, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

I could not fins anything to say that it was poisonous, I think you are correct to move it.Andham2000 12:03, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

It is strange that health benefits of basil are not mentioned at all. There's a number of pages related to that issue (e.g. http://whfoods.com/genpage.php?tname=foodspice&dbid=85 or http://www.theherbspiral.com/BasilHealth.htm), so it's a bit missleading to speak only of the negative aspects of this herb. 84.193.170.23 18:30, 25 October 2006 (UTC) Renu

[edit] Identification?

The image currently on the page listed as Image:OcimumBasilicum.jpg appears to be Holy Basil (Ocimum sanctum) and not Ocimum basilicum. -- WormRunner | Talk 20:23, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Picture of dried basil

The picture of the pile of dried basil seems a bit unnessesary as it provides no informative text and dosen't give people a better understanding of what basil is. Dried basil is also not as important as other dried herbs, because of the poor taste. In addition to the fact that the picture serves no purpose, it's also positioned badly and makes the page look messy.

Peivind

The picture of dried basil adds more to the page then the 2 pictures of flowering basil. Wether or not you think basil tastes good has no relevance to their being a picture of dried basil. In a lot of countries, the dried basil will look a lot more familiar then the flowering basil, or the leavy picture in the taxonomybox. Henna 10:12, 9 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I must admit that I agree with Peivind here. First, the picture could be just about any dried herb or, indeed, dried other things. Secondly, its current positioning is poor (I'll change that at least, though I don't want to remove it again without consensus). Thirdly, as the two existing pictures are of very different species, I think that they add quite a bit to the article (I'd like to see clearer photos of other species too). Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 08:19, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Do we also need the part about Americans being too lazy to grow their own basil? How is this factual in any way? Do we know for a fact that more basil is grown by gardeners in Germany as opposed to the state of California? --J4k3 23:52, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Chinese characters - pin ying please

Can someone who knows the Chinese add the Pinyin equivalent of the Chinese characters in the section "Other basils"? Thanks. Singkong2005 23:49, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Lemon basil / Indonesian "Kemangi"

Can someone who knows, firsthand, about Indonesian lemon basil please clarify whether it is Ocimum americanum (which tastes very much like lemons, although it is sometimes called lime basil) or Ocimum citriodorum (which tastes something like lemon balm)?

Perhaps all the different culinary species should be broken out and discussed systematically at the bottom of the page...

So far the "basil" entry is certainly rather spare and lean compared to the one for "tea". ;-) krnntp

[edit] Health benefits

This article is rather disappointing, as there's no mention of the health benefits/nutritional profile (other than an odd mention of ayurveda, as basil is used for nutritional purposes elsewhere too). Instead there's a rather flippant mention of it as a carcinogen. Greenman 20:35, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Basil.com is a commercial site

After following the link to basil.com, I found one page about basil the herb, one with some famous people named Basil, and nothing else to justify its inclusion in this article as anything other than spam. I think the link should be removed. 4.245.158.11 07:35, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Well spotted! I have removed it. If you see anything else as bad as that, please don’t hesitate to remove it yourself. Briefly explain why you are doing so in the edit summary, and (if necessary) at more length on the talk page. —Ian Spackman 09:50, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Name

I snipped out some information about the word basil ~ that most people don't know it's a proper name, and that some churches are named after St. Basil ~ as it doesn't really belong here. Cheers, Lindsay 10:55, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] My reaction to basil...

Hey guys, over the last year or two, a certain herb had been making me almost vomit. About 6 months ago I discovered that it was infact basil. Basically, when it's inside my mouth, the flavour that's released is almost unbearable. Does anyone have any idea which chemical in basil could cause my irritation. This isn't like a "i don't like seafood" type of thing. It literally makes me sick. Thanks.

[edit] The name

There is also a funny dwarf named basil... I think it's in a northern european story... maybe Switzerland? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.117.117.44 (talk) 14:45, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Basil in other languages

I've removed the recently added section "Basil in other languages", which contained the following:

Romanian: Busuioc
MALAYALAM:THULASI

There was already a comment which said "It's not reasonable to put ALL of the names of basil in other languages than English into the article" and I agree. This kind of thing (a) is largely already taken care of by looking at the interwiki links, and (b) is a better fit for a site like wiktionary anyway. Kingdon (talk) 20:30, 31 December 2007 (UTC)