Last spring, as some old friends and I discussed herbs for our gardens, I mentioned that I’d just planted cilantro. “Oh,” said one, “I don’t bother with cilantro anymore. It always bolts.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Exactly.” See, cilantro going to seed can be a good thing. I had a very specific plan for the berries that would follow the tiny blossoms.

We know this plant by two common names: cilantro and coriander. Most people would say the two are synonymous, but I think of them differently. Cilantro is what you find next to parsley on the produce shelf. Its flavor is bright, almost citrus-y, and it gives salsas, Thai food and certain other warm-weather cuisines a very particular tang.

Coriander, on the other hand, is more … blue. That’s the only way I can describe it. I became aware of this difference back when we were doing the photo shoot for our October 2007 food feature, “Infusions of Grandeur,” about infused oils. One of the oils that chef (and food stylist) J Frank had created for the shoot, coriander oil, was simply olive oil warmed and infused with coriander berries. J pan-fried scallops in it and tossed them and their pan juices with new potatoes and haricots vert for a simple salad. We all swooned.

Because J had made the oil before coming to the shoot, he had no coriander berries left for the pictures, and art director Tyler Darden really wanted some. We found a friend who had some cilantro going to seed in his garden nearby. He wasn’t home, but we were welcome to some berries if we came and got them.

I volunteered to purloin the berries. That’s what it felt like, tiptoeing into the back yard of a person I didn’t know while he was out. But it was easy to find his exuberant herb patch. I’d never seen fennel, stalks of which presided like small trees above a variety of other plants I didn’t recognize (and, well, don’t remember so well). I finally spotted the cilantro, which was several times the height of and much leggier than the low, leafy plants I was more familiar with—my cilantro experience before then, of cute little plants in my garden one day morphing into wizened, seedy twigs by the next, hadn’t prepared me for something that looked like airy Queen Anne’s lace with clumps of tiny fruits. I wasn’t sure it was what I was looking for until I brushed my hand over the flowers and gently squeezed a berry.