A fright

The plant that wasn't lovage

BIG fright last night.  Weeding the weed patch around 2030.  My back yard has a bed with a few herbs.   Mostly I see what pops up and weed out what I don't want.  I have plants I value this way. They taste stronger are probably more nutritious, require less care, are hardier and more long-lasting than the fairly tasteless lettuce I plant and neglect. It's not a tidy patch but it is tasty. They don't have bulk but they do have flavour.  They are a kind of weedy micro-greens. 

I thought my lovage had self-seeded so tore off & tasted a leaf.  Awful! Not lovage. I think I spat it out.  Mouth slightly burned. Kept salivating.  Maybe I'd mistakenly tasted a self-seeded welsh poppy that grows nearby, only that is supposed to have edible leaves (many poppies are toxic). 

Lovage

Looking at them now, the lovage and the plant I ate are quite different.  But I hadn't paid my lovage much attention for a couple of years, finding it too pungent.  Lovage is a tasty but potent aromatic. Eat too much and the flavour will put you off for months or years. One leaf goes a very long way.   I only had an impression of it in my mind's eye.  When you're outside with a cup of tea, thinking, "That's probably my self-seeded lovage," and nibbling a corner, you tend to feel reasonably secure that you aren't reaching out to a deadly plant.

I google-lensed the plant I had chewed. Google thought it was water parsley.  This drew me up.  Water parsley is not unlike fatal hemlock water dropwort (HWD).  It occurred to me, belatedly that lovage must obviously be in the same often tasty, sometimes dangerous apiaceae family. It has a similar leaf form, the plant structure is not unlike celery to which it is related. Parsley, carrots, parsnips, fennel, coriander, angelica are just a few of the other family members. Dangerous cowbane, hemlock and hemlock water dropwort are too.   The leaf similarity had not jumped out at me because one's own garden feels safe.  Besides, no-one ever mentions lovage as being in this family and so my guard was not up.  

I tried Google Lens again.  Now it reckoned my bitter leaves might be welsh poppy.  I felt slightly reassured.  For the record, pinning your reassurance on Google Lens or social media is a really bad idea.  

I wasn't too concerned. I didn't think I'd eaten the leaf and anyway a leaf isn't much.  Is it...? I recalled reading warnings that only a very small amount of these plants can be fatal. Socrates was forced to commit suicide by eating hemlock.  But the habitat of my garden is not what hemlock water dropwort prefers, which is, unsurprisingly, water.  The dog needed an evening walk so I took him round the park, took photos of various mints by the pond, relaxed.  An hour later I was surprised and now slightly concerned to still be salivating.  

Preparing for bed I looked up Hedgerow Harvest's page on HWD poisoning.  "‘probably the most poisonous plant found in Britain’. No British wild plant has been responsible for more fatal accidents caused by identification mistakes."  "30-70% fatality rate... dead in 3 hours...symptoms salivation," also 'agitation", "palpitations".  Unsurprisingly, I now had all of these.  

Hedgerow harvest's sample leaf (left) looked to me, at that time, and still, to some extent, alarmingly like mine (second and third pics).

In that agitation I read that hemlock water dropwort also likes disturbed ground, which my patch is.  Only later I realise I have misread.  Hemlock (different fatal plant, same family), further down the page, sometimes likes disturbed ground.  I do not think it is hemlock but it is startling how quickly fear can lurch us into panic.

 

I dig up the plant in the dark with my mobile torch and a shaking hand and high tail it to the hospital where the nurse says "Why did you bring the plant if it's so deadly?".  

- "Because in cases of suspected poisoning you're meant to bring the thing you think might have poisoned you."  

- "I've never heard of that."  

- "That's not reassuring," I reply, as agitated as someone with HWD is supposed to be.

The British Medical Journal in an article on HWD poisoning says having a specimen and accurate ID "facilitated an appropriate management strategy".  The nurse has not heard of HWD either.

I wait over 2 hours. I crush and sniff the plant but do not trust myself now to say whether it smells of celery or parsley or not (signs of HWD).  The stem looks pretty hairless, like hemlock and HWD but I do not at the time have enough presence of mind to check whether it has a celery-like groove as do both the toxic plants.  A forager on Twitter suggests it's creeping buttercup which can cause mouth-burn but the leaves are much softer & I have dug out enough creeping buttercup to think it's not that. 

My fingers seem to burn a bit when I touch it. The apiaceae family can cause skin burns. I wash them. Feel no worse.  A serious-looking case comes in.  By now I feel stupid, decide to go home and come back if I feel worse.  All the staff are busy.  I sneak out.  Ten minutes later, after midnight, the hospital calls:  They will see me now. Where am I? I explain, apologise.  I wake up six hours later with no ill effects.   

I had written to Hedgerow Harvest to ask what he thought it might be.  The next morning James replied suggesting greater celandine & recommended this useful Facebook group for emergency ID.   

Lunchtime revealed the legacy of the previous night.  Whereas yesterday I had put snips of yarrow in our salad, today..."what if new yarrow looks the same as baby hemlock?"  This, despite nibbling a corner and knowing it tastes like yarrow.  But, being new my yarrow hasn't flowered so, I don't know with absolute certainty.  But how do you define or describe certainty?   I know it's yarrow but the scared part of me that's had a fright won't agree so I also don't know and that combination is a very odd feeling.  

Sow thistle.  This is apparently a nutritious weed & I have several of them.  I nibbled a corner, eventually, gingerly.  It's inoffensive and would be fine, torn up in salad but I couldn't bring myself to do it, just in case it wasn't sow thistle, even though I'd checked in various online resources and in Harraps that it couldn't be anything but sow thistle.  Bitter dock is also happily taking up residence in my weed patch.  Its long taproot can make it very invasive.  I thought, if it tasted OK, I would be happy to put it in salad before pulling it out.  Apparently it has a lemony tang when young & again is nutritious.  But the corner of my young leaf clearly wasn't young enough, it wasn't especially nice.  Most of all I was relieved not to have to run the gauntlet of putting it in salad...just in case etc.  Such was my shaken confidence now that I questioned myself six times about whether a dandelion really was a dandelion.  Luckily, even its small leaves were too bitter to want to eat more than a nibble. I stuck to the well-established edible plants with flowers I knew whose stem, leaves, flowers and sometimes also seed heads allow for more holistic identification.

Walking the dog in the evening on Barnhill I spotted this feathered leaved plant.  Carrotty leaves, stem, grooved, nearly hairless, no purple blotching on the stems, but then it's young so is it hemlock or cow parsley (or something else)? I'm not sure because I haven't seen young hemlock before & I haven't tried to identify cow parsley at any stage of its life but I'm guessing it's cow parsley.  Hemlock is apparently dangerous to touch so I used gloves - having initially forgotten this and raced back to the car for baby wipes!