When I was a child in the 1980s, my family traveled nearly every summer from our home in Los Angeles to the other side of the world. We spent monsoon-drenched weeks on my grandparents’ farm in southern India’s Kerala state.
On the last day of one of our trips, there was one final item to be packed. A housekeeper knelt under a towering 20-foot curry leaf tree and dug up one of the dozens of saplings at its base. She wrapped it in a wet towel and secured it in a plastic bag. My parents stowed it in a shoe in their suitcase, and we flew back home without encountering any inspections.
Once they transplanted the sapling into a pot, they kept it warm inside the house and watched over it carefully. But it never took to the mild, dry climate of Los Angeles, and it wilted a few weeks later. After two more saplings met the same fate, my parents gave up.
But another stowaway did make the journey successfully.
Instead of a sapling, Anand Prasad brought curry leaf seeds. He is now one of the largest commercial growers in the country, with an estimated 5,000 trees on his farm outside Los Angeles.
The idea was inspired by his grandfather, who left India with a pocketful of curry leaf seeds in the early 20th century and moved to Fiji as an indentured laborer. When his grandson Prasad emigrated from the South Pacific island to Los Angeles in 1980, he tucked several seeds into his pocket. With a lot of care, they sprouted in his new home.
“It was so hard, because those seeds were not adapted here,” Prasad said. “It’s like bringing a baby from hot weather to cold weather. But once they germinate, they start growing, and then the plants are adapted.”
He recalled covering the plant with a sheet in winter and bringing it into his house. He eventually planted it in the yard, and it grew tall. That single curry leaf tree was how his farm began.
Like other non-native plants, the curry leaf tree (Murraya koenigii), which grows in tropical parts of Asia and South Asia, has taken root, adapted, and thrived in the United States. Not to be confused with curry powder, the tree’s leaves are a staple ingredient in Indian, Sri Lankan, and other Asian cuisines. Dark green and intensely fragrant, they are roasted in hot oil to release their nutty and complex citrus flavor for curries, stews, and chutneys.
The exact date of the plant’s introduction to the U.S. is difficult to pinpoint. Now, along with the widespread availability of fresh leaves in Asian grocery stores and even on Amazon, the plant itself can be purchased for windowsill pots and kitchen gardens.