Tuesday, July 04, 2017

Happy 4th of July

 Another beautiful day in the Northwoods.  Indy and I took off for the swamps early so we could justify a nap at noon.  Found these cow parsnips in bloom and the spent umbel's reminded me of fireworks.  Just like water hemlock, cow parsnips are in the carrot family.  Where water hemlock aren't very tall and all parts of the plant are very poisonous, the cow parsnip grows taller than me and is edible.  The thing is it doesn't taste all that wonderful and since it's flowers resemble other toxic members in the family, it usually isn't worth harvesting.  If you insist on trying it, look for an inflated sheath at stalk bases for identification.

1 comment:

Brent said...

Yeah, fireworks!