Poison hemlock

Conium maculatum

Apiaceae

Socrates' cup — a purple-spotted parsley that is still mistaken for fennel, carrot, and Queen Anne's lace.

Common roadside weed. Legal as a wild plant. Deadly if eaten. Do not 'wildcraft' unknown white umbels.

Parts used: None.
Traditional notes: Historical execution and obsolete external anodyne — not a living practice
Grow · USDA 6b: Biennial weed, USDA 4–9. You probably already have it on a ditch bank. Do not plant it. Learn it to pull it — gloves, bag the plants, do not compost into a food bed. In work: May · Jun · Jul
Harvest: Do not harvest.

Purple blotches on a hollow stem, mousy smell, no anise. That is the ID.
Do not put it in a wild-carrot bouquet. Gloves if you pull it.
This plate exists so fennel and parsley have a named lookalike.

Safety

All use

Lookalikes

Parsley — Poison hemlock is still pulled as ‘wild parsley.’ A purple-spotted stem is the difference between supper and Socrates’ cup.
Carrot — Queen Anne’s lace and poison hemlock share a white umbrella. One is a taproot. The other shuts the nerves down.
Fennel — Anise-scented foliage is not a field test. Poison hemlock has been called ‘wild fennel’ by people who then got very still.
Dill — A feathery roadside weed is not a pickle herb. Dill is annual and yellow; hemlock is a biennial tower with white umbels.
Yarrow — Achillea is a flat, ferny aster, not an umbel. People still call any white roadside head ‘yarrow’ — and some of those heads are hemlock.

Lore

Socrates’ cup. Conium maculatum, purple-spotted stem, mousy smell, an umbel that looks like parsley if you are a fool. This plate exists so fennel and dill have a named opposite.

The Herbarium — a teaching catalog, not a clinic. Traditional use is history, not a prescription. USDA 6b dates are a week either way, not a promise. Do not eat, drink, or harvest a plant you cannot name.