Perilla frutescens
By Luis Caballero.
Embedded Files
Imagine an organism that survived by swallowing its neighbor, stealing its energy, and completely rewriting its own DNA. It sounds like a sci-fi movie, but it's actually just the history hidden inside your salad bar.
Today, we're tracing the four-billion-year journey of Perilla leaves. We'll look at how a simple weed went through a literal 'genomic shock' to become one of the most resilient, flavor-packed plants on the planet. Let's dive in.
IMG_9253.movOrigin Of Life
•4.5 Billion Years Ago (BYA)- Earth Forms
Early earth was a hot, molten rock with abundant energy from volcanos and lightings.
•4.2-4.0 BYA- Water and Early Chemistry
Liquid water cools and stabilizes into oceans
Simple gasses reach with energy sources to create the building blocks of life (amino acids and fatty acids), as shown in the Miller-Urey Experiments
•3.6-3.8 BYA- L.U.C.A (Last Universal Common Ancestor)
Features shared by all life today: complex cell membrane, basic DNA/RNA code, and ribosome to make proteins.
Used the chemi-osmotic coupling as their source of energy.
Prokaryotic Diversity and Origin of Eukaryotes
Going back to the Grabber
(The Host): A relatively large, complex, but hungry single-celled organism (an early eukaryote). It couldn't make its own food from sunlight.
(The Neighbor): A tiny, primitive cyanobacterium (blue-green algae). This little guy had mastered a revolutionary new trick: photosynthesis. It could literally harvest solar energy.
Leaf Color and Pigmentation
•Perilla leaves primarily come in three color profiles: double-sided green, double-sided red/purple, and bicolored (green on the top surface, red/purple on the bottom).
Anthocyanin Expression:
•The red and purple colorations are caused by accumulation of anthocyanin pigments. In double-sided red varieties, these pigments express uniformly across both leaf surfaces. In bicolored varieties, expression is strictly limited to the bottom (abaxial) surface.
Geographic Variability
Korea: Kkaennip (Edible Staple)
•Cultivation Type: Grown as a primary edible crop vegetable (deulggae).
•Morphology: Broad, flat, round leaves with a green top and a slightly rougher, textured underside.
•Flavor Profile: Herbaceous and minty with a distinctive, mild licorice-like finish.
•Primary Uses: Culinary staple commonly used fresh for table wraps (ssam) or pickled (jangajji).
Japan: Shiso (Aromatic Accent)
•Morphology: Smaller, elongated leaves featuring deeply serrated, jagged edges.
•Flavor & Aroma: Highly aromatic with dominant citrusy and clove-like flavor notes.
•Key Variants: Includes both green shiso (aojiso) and a purple/red variant (akajiso).
•Primary Uses: Green leaves serve as a fresh sushi garnish; red leaves provide natural food coloring
China: Zisu (Medicinal & Flavoring)
•Morphology: Leaves are predominantly bicolored or completely purple.
•Application Scope: Heavily integrated into both traditional herbal medicine and regional culinary practices.
•Primary Uses: Used in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and widely utilized in regional cooking—most notably to season and cut the oiliness of fish dishes in Hunan cuisine.
Co-Evolution
Domesticating perilla followed an evolutionary trajectory where human migration and regional agricultural choices split a single wild ancestor into separate, highly specialized varieties (var. frutescens and var. crispa).
•The Wild/Weedy Origin: Genetically, Perilla frutescens is an allotetraploid plant believed to have originated in middle-to-high latitude areas of China, the Himalayan mountains, and Southeast Asia. In its wild form, it functioned as a hardy, self-pollinating roadside weed (Nitta et al., 2003).
•Early Selection (Over 2,000 Years Ago): The earliest documented interactions between humans and perilla date back to China's Western Han Dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE). Humans selected the plant for its dual-purpose nature: its aromatic essential oils served as medicine, and its nutritious seeds provided caloric fat (PMC10394348).
•The Morphological Divergence: As human populations expanded and agricultural practices formalized (notably peaking during China's Song and Ming Dynasties), distinct regional selection criteria permanently altered the plant's biology (MaxAPress, 2025):
•Selection for Oil and Calorie Density (var. frutescens): In northern/northeastern China and the Korean peninsula, farmers selected plants with larger, softer seeds and broader, flat leaves to maximize oil yield and vegetable mass. This co-evolutionary path yielded the modern Korean kkaennip (deulggae) and Japanese egoma.
•Selection for Volatile Aromas and Color (var. crispa): In other regions of China and Japan, humans prioritized secondary metabolites (specifically perillaldehyde and anthocyanin pigments). They artificially selected plants with smaller, deeply serrated, and purple leaves for food preservation, natural food coloring, and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). This resulted in modern shiso and zisu.
Variability
Leaf Color & Texture
Perilla leaves change drastically based on their variety:
Green Leaves: Flat and smooth; mostly used fresh as salad greens or wraps.
Purple/Red Leaves: Richer in medicinal properties; can be completely purple on both sides or only purple on the bottom.
Wrinkled Leaves: Some variants (like var. crispa) are highly wrinkled and frilly, offering a much stronger, sharper aroma.
Health Benefits & Scent
Antioxidants: The leaves are packed with natural compounds like rosmarinic acid that fight inflammation and allergies. These levels peak right before the plant flowers.
Unique Aroma: The signature minty, citrusy smell comes from an oil called perillaldehyde, which also acts as a natural defense against bugs and bacteria.
Bibliography
Sa, K. J., Choi, S. H., & Lee, J. K. (2012). Inheritance of leaf color and anthocyanin expression in Perilla frutescens. Korean Journal of Breeding Science, 44(3), 241–248.
Nitta, M., Lee, J. K., & Ohnishi, O. (2003). Asian Perilla crops and their wild progenitors: Species identification, landscape of cultivation, and genetic differentiation. Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution, 50(5), 473–486. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023910313133
Lee, M. Y., & Kim, Y. S. (2021). Volatile flavor compounds of Korean perilla (Perilla frutescens var. frutescens) leaves and their sensory characteristics. Journal of Culinary Science & Technology, 19(4), 312–325. https://doi.org/10.1080/15428052.2020.1798341
Yu, H. C., Kosuna, K., & Haga, M. (Eds.). (1997). Perilla: The genus Perilla. CRC Press. (Note: This is the definitive comprehensive handbook on Perilla taxonomy and traditional medicine).
Li, Z., Wang, B., Wei, W., Liu, Y., Wang, Q., Gao, Z., & Wei, J. (2025). Exploration of the donors and specific genes of B subgenome in Perilla frutescens based on genomic analysis. Plants, 14(23), 3698. https://doi.org/10.3390/plants14233698
Nitta, M., Lee, J. K., & Ohnishi, O. (2003). Asian Perilla crops and their wild progenitors: Species identification, landscape of cultivation, and genetic differentiation. Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution, 50(5), 473–486. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023910313133
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse