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 Hollyhock.
Foxglove for hollyhock
Two cottage spires. One is a cardiac drug. The other is a mallow you may not want to eat either, but it will not stop a heart in a cup.
Hollyhock is a mallow: round, palmate leaves and a column of stamens in an open, wide flower. Foxglove is a plantain-family spike of spotted thimbles with a basal rosette of lance leaves. A young rosette is the dangerous year.
Datura for a mallow
Trumpet flowers in a cottage bed. Datura is a tropane nightshade. Hollyhock is a mallow. Children have eaten the wrong seed pod.
Datura has a spiny capsule and a nightshade smell; flowers are funnel trumpets, often upward or nodding, with a simple calyx. Hollyhock is a column of mallow discs on a tall wand. Do not nibble an ornamental pod.
