I was out walking with my wife and kids and saw what i thought was queen anne's lace sprouting out of the ditch. When we were kids we would yank them out to smell the root to see if it smelled like carrots (hey, there was no internet). So I rip it out of the ground and tell my kids to smell it, i smell it, didn't really smell like carrots. So then i do the next logical thing and start chasing my kids around with the plant and (lightly!) whack them with the flowers.

Anyway we're having a good old time and this guy i know that's the ditch supervisor for the county comes down the road and slows to a stop. I'm like 'hey man what's up?' and he said 'uh..not much. you realize that's hemlock don't you?' 'Hmmm?' 'Yeah that's poisonous plant, it's a neurotoxin, better go home and wash off. If anybody starts feeling funny call 911.'.

And that's how i learned what hemlock looks like!

In the south, we have Oleander. Southern ladies used to put it in British soldiers’ tea to kill them during the revolutionary war. A family was vacationing at the beach here in SC and used it as hotdog (or maybe marshmallow) roasting sticks. It produces nice, straight, long sticks ideal for such a thing except that it’s fatal.

Is "ditch supervisor" a real job?

http://www.huronswcd.com/ditch-maintenance.html apparently. Looks like some places have to make sure theyre draining correctly

Interesting. Thanks for the link.

It’s part of the county office of engineering and he’s responsible for overseeing all ditch maintenance of course but has to do some light civil engineering work with all new construction and drainage projects that impact the outflow of water off of a property. Just checked and the county is 437 square miles so he keeps busy.

Oh yeah, toxic as can be. About 25 years ago I was on a local plant identification hike along the Mendocino coast of California, the leader pointed at some and asked if anyone knew what it was. It looked like Dill to me, not knowing about water hemlock, so I quickly snapped a small stem and took a whiff expecting to smell Dill. When I awoke a couple of minutes later, the whole group was looking down on me with concern. I was told that I sniffed it, and said "That's not good" and fell to the ground, I don't remember saying anything, but do recall seeing "stars". It was half an hour before I could walk again, and a couple of hours before I felt anywhere close to normal. Please don't be an ignorant fool like I was and sniff plants you don't know about.

Well, I mean who could blame you for what normally would be a harmless action? How many plants you ever encounter, especially in North America, are this toxic?

Strictly speaking, since this is the most toxic plant in NA, none.

But poison hemlock is all over the place, and while less toxic it's still quite deadly.

it's so potent the smell did that?

There is some competition for the first place and each poison is unique in its own ways.

The real problem with hemlock is Angelica. I had eaten wild Angelica and I'm not tempted to repeat the experience unless absolutely necessary. Oenanthe is a pretty evil masterpiece also (but a very satisfactory garden plant). The three can grow interwined in the same area and are roughly similar.

And the other problem with hemlock is lawnmowing fever. You can find yourself in a lot of trouble if you start casually shredding plants in a riverbank.

Talking in aesthetic terms, Hemlock is a very delicate and nice plant showing a beautiful hue of pink in fall color.

In any case, pound by pound, the worst villain in terms of number of casualties is Nicotiana. No doubt about it.

And some nightmare fuel for the fans of Batman here. Yup, evilish to the root.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risus_sardonicus

>>Roast some carrots with cumin and coriander and top it with chopped cilantro!

Wait, coriander and cilantro are just names for the same plant. It's like saying roast them with parsley and top it with some chopped parsley.

In the U.S., it's common for "coriander" to refer to the seeds, and "cilantro" to refer to the stems and leaves.

Not trying to justify that practice, just explaining.

> Not trying to justify that practice, just explaining.

I will. Seeds and the leaves serve very different purposes and tastes and so having different words is great :}

Cilantro is the Spanish word for coriander.

My speculation is that cilantro/coriander leaves entered the American mainstream via their use in Mexican food, which is why the Spanish word stuck when it comes to the leaves. But I could be wrong.

Cilantro is indeed from Spanish and a later borrowing. https://www.etymonline.com/word/cilantro#etymonline_v_13705

And Coriander is from Old French https://www.etymonline.com/word/coriander?ref=etymonline_cro... traced all the way back to

> from Greek koriannon, often said by botanists to be related to koris "bedbug" from the bad smell of the unripe fruit, or perhaps it is a non-Indo-European word conformed to the Greek insect name.

Not only that, but I find the taste different. I'm one of those people who thinks cilantro tastes like soap. For me, it overpowers all other flavors in a dish, but I find coriander seeds to be mild and pleasant tasting.

Ooh I’ve been waiting for this to come up!

I also have the soap gene and avoid cilantro. A friend told me he heard that if you harvest the cilantro before it flowers, then whatever causes the soapiness is not there. He had some that he’d gotten from a co-op, I skeptically tried a bit, and I’ll be damned! It’s true!

This obviously won’t help you at the grocery store or at restaurants, but if you want to know why most people rave about it, track some down. It’s quite tasty.

I was the same, but I found that repeated exposure to cilantro leaves in my food eventually gave me a taste for it in certain dishes.

I've always tasted the soapiness, but never minded it. As you say, it tastes right in certain dishes. I've always wondered if I'm just not getting as strong a soap flavor as others.

Same here. Can't eat anything with the smallest traces of the leafs. Seeds are ok though. Didn't find them tasting "soapy", but I must admit that I have never really tried actual soap, so it's hard to compare...

Ah, interesting, thanks! Here in UK both seeds and leaves are just called coriander, but I've heard the term cilantro used for the same plant.

I believe they use the term "coriander" to refer to the seeds, while they use the term "cilantro" to refer to the leafy matter.

I used to see these growing everywhere in the Seattle area, but on recent visits, it seems that they're less prevalent. I wonder if the city has been clearing them away.

> It’s the deadliest plant in North America, deadlier ounce by ounce than any mushroom

Mushrooming is a curious hobby. Common advice is "it's okay to bite/taste any mushroom"... but you're never to swallow until you've got a positive identification, and never ever while you're out in the field even if you think you're sure.

But plants are wicked dangerous by comparison, which really bucks common perceptions about plant/mushroom foraging. For example, simply touching wolfsbane can kill!

https://monicawilde.com/monkshood-wolfsbane-poisoning/

> Common advice is "it's okay to bite/taste any mushroom"

That is very bad advice if you ever come to Europe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amanita_virosa

Even one of this mushroom will basically put your liver into necrosis and slowly kill you. There is no effective remedy in modern medicine apart from emergency liver transplant.

It also looks much like the common and delicious champignon.

My grandfather and dad used to do that when we went mushroom-ing with the whole extended family in the woods.

Us kids looked at them in horror. However they already knew most of the poisonous species and never touched those. The “bite test” was to tell between just a few species. It was still scary to see.

FWIW, I've never been so courageous as to try this (even when I know it's a chanterelle, I can wait 'til I get home) -- but north america has it's fair share of both destroying angels (a. virosa) and death caps (a. phalloides) and I've gotten that advice from local experts. OTOH folks who know what they're doing still make fatal or near-fatal mistakes... I'm not nearly enough of an expert to trust the seemingly-cavalier expert advice ;)

Where I live the common advice is to ever forage for non-white edible mushrooms only. And of course still always do a positive identification with the help of a modern illustrated edible mushroom picking guidebook. In addition to identification instructions for good mushrooms, they include references and pictures of every known similar-looking non-edible mushroom, so you can do the positive identification.

But even with pictures, good guidebook and caution, experts still advice against picking white edible mushrooms at all. The risk of accidentally picking a destroying angel is not worth it, as any forest that has e.g. champignons (Agaricus) is going to have other good, non-white mushrooms as well.

Trying to use mushroom advice from one location in a different location is always a terrible idea.

> For example, simply touching wolfsbane can kill!

So wait, pretty much the one thing that can't kill you in NetHack is actually incredibly toxic IRL? DevTeam!!

That's an incredible oversight... one shouldn't interact with the plant without gloves, nor consume it (except to cure lycanthropy, obviously).

And now I'm surprised this isn't similarly handled to how you deal with cockatrice eggs. Never touch barehanded, incredibly useful otherwise.

Okay so this is really interesting.

The plant is featured in Harry Potter in the very first book, but it completely understates the actual danger of the plant. At least based on your link, and how even touching it can be fatal.

For those wondering, it's the first potion class in book 1.

In The Prisoner of Azkaban it's mentioned that the potion is particularly complex to make, though it doesn't actually go as far as to explain the reason behind the difficulty in making it.

Wolfsbanes are really fearsome and interesting creatures, all of them. The entire family is wonderfully wicked.

I farm in the SF bay area and the reason we never grow or server white carrots is that we have lots of water hemlock on the farm. I like to teach visitors that not everything on the farm is edible because Berkeley.

This is why you always need positive identification of a plant when foraging. Match all the details and know the look alikes. Compare a list of edible berries to poisonous ones and you'll see lots of overlapping features.

Interesting. I didn’t realize there was a related plant worse than Conium Maculatum, poison hemlock. Which I am way too familiar with - they’re common here in the Seattle area. My neighbor owns a restaurant that specializes in using lots of different herbs, and a few years ago we were in my backyard when she pointed out these tall plants with purple-spotted hollow stems, looking kind of like Queen Anne’s Lace. She told me what they were, and that I really needed to get rid of them. Been trying for years to do so. Damn things are really persistent, with long deep roots. Plus, when I weed them out (with gloves on, always), you can’t dump them in yard waste or compost. They’ve got to go in the trash. Fortunately, my kids are now old enough to know to leave them be, and warn me when they see them.

We have this growing wild everywhere in Northern Saskatchewan. I always was terrified I would accidentally touch it and die as a kid up at our cabin.

Thankfully, once you know what to look for, it sticks out like a sore thumb.

> Thankfully, once you know what to look for, it sticks out like a sore thumb.

Hopefully. There's been a big uptick in interest in elderberry due to coronavirus, so we'll see how good people are at telling the difference in a few months.

Totally different plants. One is a woody plant with nicely lemony fragrant flowers and poisonous leaves and stems, the other a weed that smells bad (and has poisonous leaves and stems).

Terrified?!?

Why? Simply because it'll cause you to "chew your tongue into ribbons" and "muscles start contracting so hard they can dislocate bones"?

Pussy.

Ok it's obvious I can't eat this... but what happens if I touch it?

Nothing serious unless you have an open cut and crush the plant or break the leaves. As long as you respect its integrity you could "pet it" gently perfectly.

Just watch for not shallowing accidentally any part of the plant, and wash your hands later from removing pollen traces

This is part of the problem with the plant. Zero warnings in a beautiful delicate wild flower. Wolfsbane is worse in that sense.

What about honey made by bees who collected the hemlock flower pollen? There's some inception.

Will not happen probably. I doubt that bees would be interested at all.

> Intoxication has also been reported following skin contact with the plant; a case was reported where a family of five people rubbed the plant onto the skin and were poisoned, with two children dying

From Wikipedia

Looks like a tale or a misidentification. Rubbing (applying/firmly pressing) hemlock against the skin would lead to blisters, not to death, unless rubbing is applied directly on skin cuts. If the wikipedia history is true, the real poisoning was secondary and probably inner (Either for breathing in a place with lots of plants, or accidentally shallowing small chunks, or a crime disguised as accident)

My bet would be that they mistoken it for something edible/medicinal and tried to make an antimosquito recipe. Children always take a quick bit of anything that their parents show them as interesting.

The link in the article to a book from 1939 on suicides among the Iroquois tribes is interesting. It contains some accounts of the root being used to make poultices for rheumatism and arthritis.

Most recent published examples of contact have not ended in death. If you get emergency care, you will probably survive.

"Probably" should not inspire you to try it, but should encourage you to get help as quickly as possible, and not just assume it would be futile.

The interesting difference of this plant, vs many other toxics, is that it doesn't taste or smell bad.

But how's the quality of life after? On a scale of "full recovery" to "my only break from a life of crippling agony is when my internal injuries cause me to black out"?

The description of death that comes from consuming this stuff is nightmare material.

To anyone wondering, this is from the article:

> Every single muscle starts firing and contracting, so you have convulsions, you chew your tongue into ribbons, you vomit but then you can’t open your mouth because the jaw muscles are contracting 10 or 20 times as hard as they normally do, and you die a horrible death.

> Those who eat it will die in two hours. It must be a painful death. It twists the arms and ankles and turns the head back. Finally they die in a last wretching convulsion. They say it turns the eyes back.

> Cicutoxin is a GABA antagonist; it turns off the brakes. Without that... the brain goes nuts: Everything starts firing. Anyone unfortunate enough to ingest cicutoxin starts sweating, vomiting, and salivating violently. Kidney failure is common, as is an irregular heartbeat and difficulty breathing. Muscles start contracting so hard they can dislocate bones.

To make the matters worse, anti-toxins may or may not work.

Worse than the manchineel?

According to the Wikipedia article manchineel actually hasn't killed anyone in modern literature, despite having a description of the taste of it's fruit. My guess is the tree doesn't directly kill as much as massively inflame flesh so it's still "survivable"

Manchineel is more toxic but it only grows in the tropics.

Florida is still North America isn't it?

Yes, but...

"Spotted water hemlock grows in freshwater marshy or swampy areas throughout the entire continent of North America, save the island of Newfoundland. It can be found in Alaska and Florida, in the vast unpopulated stretches of the American west and in the parks of New York City. It is not especially common, but its range is massive."

And before you respond, refer to: https://www.xkcd.com/386/