Hemlock

[Geoff Dann]

OK...so I bought Miles Irving's book last year and wanted to try the lacey-leaved umbellifers. But I wasn't sure about Hemlock, having never tried to identify it before. All year I looked for it and finally found some a couple of weeks back. It's pretty easy to identify as a mature plant. It smells bad and it has purple blotches on the stem. The question is this: would I so easily recognise a young one next year, or are they easier to confuse with edible umbellifers when young?

 

[Geoff Dann]

Can I conclude from 58 views and no replies that most of the people here do not eat young lacey-leaved umbellifers?

 

[dwardo]

Sorry man, only just getting into the complicated world of umeblies and no where near eating them yet.
Free bump as i too have an interest

 

[Rumi]

I know of at least 3 nasty accidents with umbies, I do periodically use wild carrots but and its a big BUT. Only if there is noting else..

umbellifers cover a wide range of plants, most of them very toxic. Ensure you are absolutely 100% certain - good luck.

 

[Harvestman]

I avoid white umbellifers generally. Hemlock water dropwort makes a lot of people very ill each year when they mistake it for edible cow parsley. Hemlock itself is pretty easy to identify, if only by the foul smell, even when young, but generally this is not an easy group. A bit like mushrooms, I would say leave the young ones alone until they have had time to grow enough for them to be properly identified.

 

[iamasmith]

If it's any indication, I did a wonderful course recently run by Patrick McGlinchey who had a chap called George who did the foraging bit. I understand he does top end military courses for this kind of thing. He said to us that he personally he just didn't bother with umbellifers at all because it was so bad if you got it wrong and so easy to do so.

 

[Geoff Dann]

I avoid white umbellifers generally. Hemlock water dropwort makes a lot of people very ill each year when they mistake it for edible cow parsley.

I found that earlier this year and I'm pretty sure I know it.

Hemlock itself is pretty easy to identify, if only by the foul smell, even when young, but generally this is not an easy group.

That's why I am interested in it...

 

[xylaria]

There are several types of water dropwort and they all have differant shaped leaves, some are rare plants. Hemlock water dropwort smells and looks like celery and kills with 6 hours from status siezures. The other water dropworts are classed as poisonous. There are several other umbrelliers that are mighty dodgy. The only ones I gather from the wild is hogweed and pignut. I can id a few other of the eaters but I don't encounter them often enough to gather.

I spent two years learning hogweed and everything that could possibly look like it before eating. I want a long life to learn new things not die for toxicology write up.

 

[Geoff Dann]

There are several types of water dropwort and they all have differant shaped leaves, some are rare plants. Hemlock water dropwort smells and looks like celery and kills with 6 hours from status siezures. The other water dropworts are classed as poisonous. There are several other umbrelliers that are mighty dodgy. The only ones I gather from the wild is hogweed and pignut. I can id a few other of the eaters but I don't encounter them often enough to gather.

You don't encounter cow parsley? It's all over the place!

From what I have read, it is only hemlock and hemlock water dropwort that are going to kill you.

 

[Toddy]

You are mistaken.
There are four families of toxic white umbellifleurs; Cowbane, Hemlock, Hemlock waterdropwort and Fool's Parsley, and as Xylaria has said, there are several varieties.

It is also a fact that what is common in one area is not necessarily common in another.

Mugwort is 'everywhere' around here, but I was working 30 miles away on Sunday and it's a totally unknown plant to the locals.

I know of only one person, out of the hundreds I know who forage, who confidently names every species of white umbellifleur.

There is another issue, the plants of the white umbellifleurs have a prevalence to cause dermatitis, and cause cattle who graze on them to produce milk that is unfit for consumption.

So, poisoning, dermatitis, difficulty in confident identification and only really four of them are worth eating anyway
Hardly surprising most folks just avoid all but those.

Pignut is good food, hogweed too, and Sweet Cicely has lovely seeds and scents and Scot's Lovage is (well for me) hard to find, but also a pot herb with edible seeds.

All too easy to get the umbellifleurs wrong with tragic results.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Geoff Dann]

You are mistaken.
There are four families of toxic white umbellifleurs; Cowbane, Hemlock, Hemlock waterdropwort and Fool's Parsley, and as Xylaria has said, there are several varieties.

OK...I should have said there are only two which are readily confusable with the edibles which are going to kill you. Cowbane looks nothing like the edible umbellifers and the only recent case of poisoning by fool's parsley was that of a goat in 1975. By comparison, both hemlock and hemlock water dropwort regularly kill people because of they are deadly and easily confused with good edible species.

Mugwort is 'everywhere' around here, but I was working 30 miles
away on Sunday and it's a totally unknown plant to the locals.

It's everywhere around here too, although not quite as common as cow parsley.

I know of only one person, out of the hundreds I know who forage, who confidently names every species of white umbellifleur.

That just makes it even more desirable to be able to do so.

Pignut is good food, hogweed too, and Sweet Cicely has lovely seeds and scents and Scot's Lovage is (well for me) hard to find, but also a pot herb with edible seeds.

Plus ground elder, wild angelica, bur chervil, cow parsley, wild celery, wild carrot, wild parsnip and alexanders.

I eat all manner of fungi that most people would (and probably should) steer well clear of because of the potential for confusion with dangerously poisonous species. I have no intention of being scared away from eating some of the best edible umbelifers because of the potential for confusion with hemlock and HWD. At least not so long as I am sure I can recognised a small hemlock plant, which is why I started the thread. I'm still not 100% I can do this, so until I have then I will stay away from cow parsley... It is precisely the same procedure as learning to safely eat Amanitas and Clitocybes.

 

[xylaria]

This book is an excellant resource for those that want to take foraging seriously

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Poisonous-Plants-Britain-Animal-Poisoning/dp/0112429815

There is an illustrated guide as well.

It puts toxicology into a realistic prospective, not coloured by cocky ego or mass media paranoia.

 

[Toddy]

Thanks Xylaria
Duly ordered


Geoff Dan, I personally know of people who have gotten the fool's parsley wrong, and it's a lot more recently than 1975.

To understand and to confidently identify all the white umbellifleurs (Alexanders are yellow flowered) is a very good aim I can fully appreciate your intention, but I am also very aware that many of them are not as straight forward as they might seem, and that many folks will not encourage experimentation, especially on a website simply because if it does go wrong, it can go horridly wrong.
Bit like fungi there.

The ones I recommended are the ones that are considered safe to do so.

Several of the others you mention are quite region specific, bur chervil for instance seems to be E. Anglia. I know most of us will never have seen it.

Queen Anne's lace is the one with the red flower in the centre of the spray, so that's simple enough...........or is it? I've seen examples where the spray was entirely pink, and others where it was a definite yellow cream.

Some of the others are edible (ground elder's not lacey leaved) but they're pretty vile to eat and there is always the dermatitis issue for many folks.

Good on you for wanting to learn, but don't disparage those of us who advise caution.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Toddy]

Found a link to some excellent photos
http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/qal.html

http://www.wildflowerfinder.org.uk/Flowers/E/Elder(Ground)/Elder(Ground).htm

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Geoff Dann]

To understand and to confidently identify all the white umbellifleurs (Alexanders are yellow flowered) is a very good aim I can fully appreciate your intention, but I am also very aware that many of them are not as straight forward as they might seem, and that many folks will not encourage experimentation, especially on a website simply because if it does go wrong, it can go horridly wrong. Bit like fungi there.

I fully understand the perils of over-enthusiastic foraging by novices. I've spent the last year as resident mushroom expert on a website where people post photos of fungi, and I have no choice but to be uber-careful about telling people they can eat stuff based on a picture. It is very easy to make a mistake, and if you make a bad one then you're wormfood.

On the other hand, I want to be able to make a living taking people out foraging for 9 months of the year rather than just the 4 when most of the mushrooms appear, and that means I need to be able to tell them they can eat stuff that they'd not be able to eat without "expert" guidance. So I am glad that there's a group of plants which contains both excellent edibles and dangerous poisonous species; expert knowledge of the white lacey-leaved umbellifers is clearly a saleable commodity! Now I just need to find some public access land where there is a nice selection of umbellifers, a few patches of St George's mushroom and some ash woodland for morels...

 

[Toddy]

Best of luck with it Geoff Other folks run schools doing it, so it's possible

I always wondered why fungi foraging seemed to be so fraught with difficulty, when in France every Chemist (pharmacist) will have a look at a basket load and pick out the edibles for someone
Do they only pick out the few really good ones ?
White umbellifers ought to be easier than that surely.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[Geoff Dann]

Best of luck with it Geoff Other folks run schools doing it, so it's possible

I always wondered why fungi foraging seemed to be so fraught with difficulty, when in France every Chemist (pharmacist) will have a look at a basket load and pick out the edibles for someone

I'm glad they do not do this here. It would be very bad news for populations of all sorts of non-edible wild fungi.

 

[Toddy]

I had a discussion with some of the folks on one of the local fungal foray type groups, and they had a difference of opinion on that.

If I want to keep and apple or a rose, or many other plants flowering or fruiting, I need to prune them, dead head them.
The comments those folk made were along the lines that so long as the mycellium is not damaged, then gathering fungi is not actually detrimental to the plant, and might indeed encourage it to fruit.

I have no idea of how true this is, but I would say that in Europe, where there is a long history of collection, without the church encouraged no picking and the urbanisation of the population break in the tradition that happened here, there seems to be no shortage of fungi.

Interested to hear arguments one way or the other.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[gregorach]

One argument I've heard is that by picking and transporting mushrooms, you're actually helping them spread their spores around.

 

[Geoff Dann]

Toddy,

I have no idea of how true this is, but I would say that in Europe, where there is a long history of collection, without the church encouraged no picking and the urbanisation of the population break in the tradition that happened here, there seems to be no shortage of fungi.

It's rubbish. If it were true, then there would still be plenty of chanterelles within 50 miles of Paris instead of them being wiped out by overpicking. I also cannot see how it helps something like a bolete if people go around picking loads of them whilst they are buttons which have not dispersed any spores yet. I don't buy the claim that picking the mushrooms encourages them to fruit either. They are not flowers.