Poison Hemlock

Here's some Poison Hemlock I met a couple months back. Poison Hemlock is interesting in a lot of ways:

  1. It's not native to North America. It's an invasive plant from Europe and other Mediterranean regions.
  2. Despite not being a native species, a native butterfly (the Black Swallowtail) can use it as a host plant as a caterpillar.
  3. It's related to plants we can eat, like carrots, parsley, and celery. 
  4. Though Poison Hemlock is plenty poisonous, our native water hemlocks are considered even more poisonous.
  5. It was the way the ancient Greeks got rid of Socrates and other condemned prisoners.
  6. It's not related to the hemlock trees, which are pine trees with foliage that smell slightly similar to Poison Hemlock leaves. The trees aren't poisonous (though this isn't an endorsement to eat their bark or needles).
I don't see a lot of Poison Hemlock around, but there are areas where it's doing pretty well. I've heard that people have eaten it thinking that it was Queen Anne's Lace (aka Wild Carrot), but the mature plants I've seen don't look all that similar to me. (Maybe immature plants would be easier to confuse.)

May 18, 2021 at Duke Farms
Photo 132039572, (c) jpviolette, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)


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