Part XII
32 named mix-ups — tea leaves, white umbels, autumn cups, and two plants that share a common name. A comparison is not a forage license.
Foxglove for comfrey in a kettle is the worst garden story in this folio. Poison hemlock for parsley is the worst roadside one. If a plant is not in flower and you cannot name it, it is not tea, salad, or a wild carrot.
Pairs involving Poison hemlock.
Hemlock for parsley
Poison hemlock is still pulled as ‘wild parsley.’ A purple-spotted stem is the difference between supper and Socrates’ cup.
Conium has smooth, hollow, purple-blotched stems and a mousy smell when crushed. Garden parsley is green to the ground, never blotched, and smells of the kitchen. Hairless white umbels on a roadside are not an herb.
Hemlock for wild carrot
Queen Anne’s lace and poison hemlock share a white umbrella. One is a taproot. The other shuts the nerves down.
Wild carrot has a hairy stem, a three-forked bract under the umbel, and often a dark floret in the center. Hemlock is hairless, purple-spotted, and the bracts are short and even. Do not forage a white umbel from a ditch.
Hemlock for fennel
Anise-scented foliage is not a field test. Poison hemlock has been called ‘wild fennel’ by people who then got very still.
Fennel is glaucous, yellow-flowered, and smells of liquorice even in the stem. Hemlock flowers white, stinks of mouse, and carries those purple spots. Crush, look, and walk away if you are unsure.
Hemlock for dill
A feathery roadside weed is not a pickle herb. Dill is annual and yellow; hemlock is a biennial tower with white umbels.
Dill is blue-green, anise-soft, and the umbel is flat and yellow. Hemlock is taller, white, purple-blotched, and the leaf is triangular, not thread-fine. Never pick an unknown umbel for the jar.
Yarrow for a white umbel
Achillea is a flat, ferny aster, not an umbel. People still call any white roadside head ‘yarrow’ — and some of those heads are hemlock.
Yarrow leaves are finely divided, aromatic, and alternate on a tough stem; the head is a cluster of tiny daisies, not an umbel. Hemlock is a true parsley-family umbrella. If you cannot see the little daisy discs, it is not yarrow.
