Taxus baccata (yew) and another fright!

Yew leaves and berry

Last weekend I went to learn more about edible plants with a professional guide, along with other participants at Vogrie Country Park near Dalkeith. The event was run in partnership with a mindfulness teacher.   We started off beside jack-by-the-hedge (garlic mustard).  I had tasted the leaves in early spring.  They are spent now, summer being the time of fruit and seeds.  I had in recent days been looking for these seeds, but had thought that they too were past.  Here they were though, hidden inside thin finger-like seed pods. Their flavour was pungent, reminiscent of the mustardy leaves. 

Garlic mustard seed cases

We tried some of its leaves fermented and dried although they still felt slightly damp. The leaves may have been wild garlic rather than garlic mustard, I wasn't taking notes at that stage. They had a salty, coastal, smoky flavour, one that I would love to taste again. Luckily, there is a recipe.

   

Later, we tried preserved spruce tips, a sort of caramelised wild candy. The tips had been made into a syrup.  Once the syrup was finished the tips were further preserved by being packed in sugar, layered to prevent mould.   The result, a sweet, chewy, piney delicacy.  Apparently you can do the same with the tips of spruce, larch, pine.  When they are covered in a sheath  you pick the smallest tips from the side branches.  Someone brazenly asked for more.  Our guide generously said "Of course!" To I think to a general feeling of wicked delight, the jar was passed around again.  

We had tastings of a sweet purple wine which might have been elderberry.  Had it been left it might have become a sort of port.  I doubted it would last that long. 

These tastings were interspersed with demonstrations of the spit test for russula mushrooms or how you might make a plaster from a birch bolete we encountered by chance.  Crossing a field I mentioned I had had no success with tasting dock.  Our guide showed me how to take only the base of the plant at this time of year.  This led on to showing  the group how you would make a larger plaster from a dock leaf, using the stalk to bind it and the leaf's mucus to calm a bite or sting. 

Before long we walked below a yew tree.  Our guide mentioned in passing a fact relatively well-known:  all parts of the tree are poisonous, .  

Taxus baccata are dark leaved evergreens. Taxus, I discovered later comes via Greek, from Taxša, the Scythian word for yew (and bow), although according to the University of Wisconsin, 'taxis' means "order or arrangement" and 'baccata' means "carrying berries".  "The words "toxic" and "textile" are derived from the root 'taxus' due to the roots toxicity and its bark's utility as a weaving material".  

The linguistic connections do not make total sense to me, nor is it clear why textile and toxicity are supposed to be connected but you can tease out connections.  Yew clearly was in the past and perhaps still is used for bows, being both strong and flexible.  It is toxic and a local cabinet maker recommended using masks when working with it for that reason.  Apparently, it has some lovely patterns and is a particular yellow.

Yews live to a great age.  In 'The ancient yew: a history of Taxus baccata', Robert Bevan-Jones notes there are ten yews in Britain that are believed to predate the 10th century.  

The Fortingall yew here in Perthshire is estimated, perhaps conservatively, to be about 2000 years old, placing it among the oldest plants in Europe.  Funeral processions would apparently pass through the arch formed by the split trunk.  Visit Scotland places, rather more sensationally, between 3000 and 9000 years old but Robert Bevan Jones believes the age of yews is often overestimated. 

Diversion

Another substantial yew is found at the graves of Betsy Bell and Mary Grey, near Perth.  This seems to be a surprisingly little trod path.  You can hike there along the Almond valley from Cromwellpark.  It is the section after Methven woods and the bridge at Dalcrue that is less well walked and unsigned bar on marker which apparently attempts to keep people away from cattle.  After that, you guess your own way as there is no real path. 

You will find the grave down a steep bank by the river. The two girls tried to evade the plague in the seventeenth century but it sought them out when a boy brought food from Perth to their hiding place and all three succumbed.  

Grave of Betsy Bell and Mary Grey

I wonder if the yew is the same tree dramatically depicted in this early engraving of the same site from the 1845 "Scotland Illustrated".  

The story of this local legend became a well known song (lyrics)and travelled the world. There is the haunting version by English folk rock band Steeleye span or the upbeat, catchy version by the American celtic group Cherish the Ladies.  The story even, in 1878, became the subject of  a Mother Goose nursery rhyme.  

Diversion end.

Yew wood is highly resistant to rot and decay.  The Woodland Trust tells us "One of the World's oldest surviving wooden artefacts is a yew spear head estimated to be around 450,000 years old."

John Aubrey in his Natural History & Antiquities Of The County Of Surrey ("begun in the year 1673") says of the village of Crowhurst:

Ten yards circumference is nine metres! This tree boasted a hollow interior space of about 6 feet, with a doorway and wooden door. Yews are witnesses to centuries of history. In the nineteenth century the same yew was fashioned into a summerhouse, during which modification a cannonball was found inside the tree, believed to have been there since the civil war.

Yews are associated with both life and death. Many reasons are given for why they are often found in churchyards. One commonly cited is because many churches were established on sites of pre-Christian worship in cultures in which the yew may have been important.

The yew was apparently sacred to druids. Druidry.org has many yew stories and states "In early times, the darkly glorious yew-tree was probably the only evergreen tree in Britain".  I am sceptical.  Box, holly and juniper are all native evergreens.  Perhaps they were counting these as shrubs.  Still, Scots pine, our only native pine, is an evergreen tree.  You can see a nationally impressive version near Perth, in Muirward wood, Scone.  It is called the King of the Forest and as I recall is a hundred yards or so off the main path. 

Scots pine, King of the Forest, Muirward wood

I saw it on Halloween towards dusk last year when the wood was distinctly spooky.

 

A Gallic-Germanic people called Eburones by the Romans lived between the Rhine and the Maas. Their name means “the people of the yew” apparently after their places of worship. Whether such tribes planted yews or whether they simply set up next to them and why, is unclear. The website Plant-lore cites similar doubt and suggests various other reasons why yews might be found in churchyards:

Perhaps there are other practical reasons. Nothing grows under a yew due to the thickness of the canopy and the carpet of needles, which does make for easier churchyard maintenance. I have noticed too that in winter yews are particularly good at sucking up snow and ice, leaving the ground below, clear.  Waterlogged or flooded churchyards could be problematic.

Yew, Dunkeld, near the ruined cathedral

The association of the yew with immortality is partly because their fractures seem able to resist disease, unlike most other trees, and because even at a great age they are able to put out new shoots form low in the trunk. 

In one of the many surprising apparent contradictions found in the kingdoms of plant and funghi the tree's highly poisonous taxane alkaloids have been developed as anti-cancer drugs. Whichever way you turn you find the yew, rooted, Janus-like, facing both the start and the end of life.

Passing under the yew in Vogrie our guide continued almost as an aside, "But the pulp around the berry is not toxic.  It's delicious, provided you don't eat the seed.  A few seeds will lay you out in the mortuary.  You wouldn't choose to smoke food by burning yew." 

This sounded like the plant world's version of Russian roulette.  Should you like living dangerously all you need do (other than trying to cycle or cross a road in modern-day Perth) is go for a walk from your house.  There are many deadly species all within an hour's circular walk of my house  on the edge of the city centre.  There will likely be from yours too. Wolfsbane, yew, hemlock, hemlock water dropwort and probably many poisonous mushrooms are all found near me. Even foxglove could kill you in large quantities.  If you mistook lily of the valley for wild garlic and left the subsequent poisoning symptoms untreated, it might prove fatal.

There is a wonderful paragraph in John Wright's River Cottage book about mushrooms, on the edible mushroom Amanita spissa and it's near exact resemblance, bar one small detail, to the deadly Panther Cap.  Dicing with these two would be another example of plant Russian roulette:

   

"Perhaps I shouldn't be telling you this," continued our guide, immediately riveting everyone's attention.  "...but I tell my children about this dangerous tree and the delicious seed pulp.  It's better for them to know what is dangerous than not. As I was digesting this nugget and wondering how old his children were, he ate the berry from the "tree of death", sucked off the pulp and spat out the seed.  

"You know so much", I said later, somewhat awestruck. 
"I grew up with it", he said,  modestly, with a shrug. He was evidently giving his children the same, useful education. 

"Delicious! Like tropical fruit" he exclaimed of his yew berry, with characteristic fizz and enthusiasm.  I had no intention of doing the same. But other participants were rapidly following his lead.  To my surprise I found myself reaching for a berry.  "Live dangerously" passed like a flying banner, through my mind. This was not, I felt the life philosophy characteristic of me.  Still, "Group Poisoned on Foraging Walk" is not a headline I had ever seen or expect to see.  I tried to squish the pulp off in my hand but the berry is very small.  I popped the whole thing in my mouth. "One seed probably wouldn't kill you, in the event you inadvertently ate it." announced our guide. 

I wasn't getting much from the pulp, which was not surprising given that it is about half the size of a pinkie fingernail, but then my obsession with not swallowing the seed probably precluded such nuances as taste.  "Don't touch the seed with your teeth either, in case you scratch it" he said, causing me to nearly swallow the damn thing in fright. I sucked off the pulp and spat out the seed with relief.  I hadn't had any real taste sensation and felt rather dismayed at all that risk for so little result.

"I think I'd rather eat a passionfruit", I breathed to another participant.  

"...apart from the unsustainable food miles," she replied, chasteningly.

During our walk as we happened across various plants our guide regaled us from his store of fascinating facts.  There was no planned itinerary. I felt that we could have come across a cross-section of different plants and he would have still had a great store of stories and knowledge on which to draw.  During the second world war the Germans used nettle hemp for their uniforms.  In Italy, it's illegal to gather mushrooms in anything but a wicker basket, so that the spores may spread.  Deadly wolfsbane is boiled all day in China and eaten.  Funghi have not just two sexes, male and female, but hundreds.  The mushroom we see is only the reproductive organs of the much larger organism, which lives underground or on wood. 

Five minutes or so after eating the yew pulp we stopped beside a lime tree. Our guide started telling us that in Polish Lipiec means July. Its name is derived from lipa the linden or lime tree which flowers in that month.  During the absorption of this fascinating titbit, I started to feel distinctly unwell, dizzy and jelly-like. Within seconds I felt I was about to collapse and stepped forward, reaching out my hand to steady myself on...the air.  It was grasped by the warm and reassuring hand of the mindfulness teacher standing beside me.  Interrupting our foraging teacher mid-flow I announced starkly that I did not feel well.  Everything stopped and everyone was silent while I stood, wobbling. "Let's sit down", somebody suggested.  

Someone else offered me a mat to sit on, our guide poured me some water.  After a minute or two when it seemed I was not about to start convulsing on the forest floor, somebody suggested moving to sit further into the glade.  Our guide offered to help me up.  Someone asked me how I was feeling.  I was still too discomposed to be aware of who this was but replied that I felt shaky.  Our mindfulness teacher mentioned to me she too had experienced something she described as a "wave" after eating the flesh of the yew berry, as had another participant though not with such dramatic effects.  Getting things back on track, sanguinely she suggested this might be a good time to practice mindfulness. I wondered if that's what mindfulness caused you to do:  observe effects rather than react to them.  We all sat down again and followed her prompts in meditation.

After fifteen minutes or so she rang a small dish which made a beautiful bell-like sound, returning us to the normal world. She asked us to comment on how we were feeling and our "internal weather".  Most people's were mixed.  Some of the mothers seemed to share a feeling that since the pandemic they had felt as though under a storm cloud, but that now there were rays of light. I though felt enormous relief that my life was in fact, at least for the time being, continuing. Everyone laughed and my sense of gratitude increased not only for my persisting existence and the restorative connection of laughter but towards all the strangers who had stepped forward in various small ways, to offer support. Of such small tokens are some of the important moments in life composed.   

This sense persisted.  Later, we followed another meditation sitting in a field.  Sitting meditation is not my forte.  I feel inflexible, uncomfortable and too long-limbed to fold mine into the contortions others seem to manage with ease sitting calmly straight and poised.  I realised I was sitting below a large beech tree. "Never camp below a beech tree" had been one of the snippets our guide had shared with us.  The branches are prone to crash down, unexpectedly. Sitting below a heavy branch I recalled that beeches used to be known as "widow-makers".  Beech woods at this time of year are noisy.  What must have been the beech masts (seeds) falling continuously to the floor sounded to me like the faint cracks preceding a branch falling on my head.  I felt I could not disrupt the silent meditation by moving.  The tree was big and the only refuge further out under the hot sun, which I preferred to avoid.  Long minutes ticked by.            

The remainder of the walk passed with much of interest and nothing of alarm. At the end, sitting on the grass, we enjoyed a delicious, foraged meal prepared by our host. The centrepiece was one of the richest, most flavoursome vegan stews that I have ever tasted.  It consisted of wild mushrooms and garden vegetables, accompanied by wild garlic pesto on bread, fresh garden salad and a cep carpaccio garnished with spicy nasturtium flowers. 

                             

 

At the end of the day our mindfulness teacher asked us to describe our feelings in one word. Mine was "gratitude".  It described surviving the perils of nature, enjoying the delicious food and the luck in meeting the helpful and interesting people in the group. 

I had learned too from other participants, including a Polish woman who summed up the confusing world of foraging pragmatically.  "In Poland, we have a saying:  All the mushrooms are edible, some of them only once."

A reply on censorship, vigils, untrustworthy types, bike lanes...

 Hi Robert,

I thought this would be a long comment to your Facebook post, so I'm putting it here instead. 

I was so very sorry to hear about your daughter.

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I completely agree with you about approaching the family first for any event regarding the death of their family member. A lady called Margaret Lowdon, who was regularly seen by many on her bike, was killed here in Bridgend, Perth just over three years ago, in July 2018.  I had recently read an article about a guy called Geoffrey Bercarich in Canada who sadly had organised a lot of [memorial] ghost bikes. Another bike activist and I had thought about doing a ghost bike for this lady. I contacted  Geoffrey to ask for advice. His first point was “ask the family”. In the case of bike accidents, the family may not want to go past a daily reminder of their loved one’s passing still less when it was in such a violent way. So I wrote to Mrs Lowdon's widower to ask and it was not an easy letter. He didn’t reply. I took that as a sign that he didn’t want it and dropped the idea immediately.

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I don’t know the groups or individuals you mention and have no interest in getting involved.  But things you mention sounded familiar: e.g. misdescription of a non-criminal act and censorship. I’m not on Facebook much because I have found the level of debate depressing. But censorship on e.g. blogs is absolutely the norm in my experience. The other norm is that censorship is usually not to prevent the abuse that tends to be its justification.  It is simply because the blog owners don’t want to appear wrong.  Why not let people make up their own minds about things that are said?   Non-censorship can be very revealing.  Equally, so can censorship - of the censor!  Censorship asks the question: why doesn't someone want people to make up their own minds?  

The pernicious thing about censorship is that you can't highlight it to the readership - unless you know the same people in another setting.  You can only find out the extent of it by asking others who you suspect may have been censored.  This can be difficult or at least time-consuming. I know because I've done it  Ultimately it doesn't really matter because even one example of censorship is revealing enough of the perpetrator to you.  And, if they do it once they probably do it often and to many people.  This is what I discovered some years after I first wrote about censorship.  Curiously, the same post also refers to people not using their own name, something you mention too. They are not unrelated.   There were other posts on censorship I never did get round to publishing.   It becomes a rabbit hole.

⁠

Both misdescription and censorship in my experience often go hand in hand with things like control. Sometimes people try to control a group for power's own sake, or for status.  Sometimes it's tied to not wanting to appear wrong, as with censorship. Often it’s linked to commercial exploitation. 

I agree people who don’t use their own names are trying to hide something and one has to ask why. Such people feel untrustworthy. It goes along with various forms of word-dodging and word-twisting and hiding, or sneaking about, generally. The same people often edit e.g. Facebook posts retrospectively to make someone who has already commented look wrong or what they have said, misrelated.  It's another reason Facebook is such a cesspit of idiocy & dishonesty.  Those exercising these vices are best ignored but sometimes, especially when they target you, as they sometimes will, you just have to call it out. Ultimately, various forms of deceit are at the root of all these behaviours.  Again, it is usually about hiding something.  One wants to ask hide what?  And why? I think below the need to hide is fear and compassion is ultimately the only response to that.

⁠

Personally I think bike lanes are the way forward but this is another story. 

I don’t see this view as incompatible with Critical Mass. If there were enough cyclists on the road then we wouldn’t need lanes because we would be the traffic. But we’re not right now and I won’t be putting my kids back on Perth’s roads any time soon the way they are. I might write (again) to the council though telling them all the places we can’t cycle safely because there are no bike lanes / traffic free routes.  It's not just that we feel unsafe.  It is unsafe.  We have been driven at directly many times, never mind all the people who just don't see you. Better yet, I might do another survey of the city asking people between where and where they would like to cycle if only they felt safer. It would be interesting to see what the most requested journeys are.  

Why do that? Because the only thing I've found that even slightly interests politicians or organisations like  councils is majority opinion.  What is motivating the mob, the council and the politicians is short termism and self-interest.  So you wonder, why bother trying to change a system from within in which these are the drivers? Why not opt out, do something different? That's one reason I like CM.   It shows how things could be different. I like that there are officially no leaders, no set route, that people step in to keep others safe. I especially like that it's all free, that it's a celebration, that it can be actually, whatever you want, that it is no one thing.  I loved the tunes on my first CM - thanks for those, and for taking us on a route with so much variety. I love that so many people loved what we were doing.  Most of all I love the fact that people power acting freely can change, even if only for a few moments, the dynamics of society, in this case, how a road system works and for whom. 

⁠

I don’t think driver behaviour will change on the grand scale without changes to the physical infrastructure.  I think more drivers becoming cyclists will help which will only happen when people who don't currently feel safe, feel safe enough to cycle.  More prosecution of drivers putting cyclists lives at risk may also help change driver behaviour though on this I am more sceptical. 

I have found. and God knows, I've had practice, confronting people doesn’t change their behaviour.  If anything it entrenches it. I’ve had more success planting a seed in possibly fertile ground and leaving it, often for a long time. But there’s a lot of stony ground.  Reading Mark Boyle's "The Moneyless Man" last night he says the same thing about trying to change people:

"The apsect of the year [of moneyless living] that I have felt happiest about was my parents' reaction. It's been interesting for me to watch them to go on their journey since I started on my path.  At the beginning I'd ranted on, telling them how everything they were doing was wrong, how my opinion was right and how they needed to change.  Understandabley this erected walls, defences, through which none of us could properly communicate.  But it was I who needed to change.  What made my opinion more correct than theirs? Or anyone else's for that matter?  I stopped my pestering. (It seems children's pester power only works if they're trying to get their parents to buy more, not less.) After about six months after my decision to leave them in peace, I noticed small changes.  One time, my mum phoned to tell me she and dad had decided to go vegetarian.  Another, she rang to say she was going to stop buying so much stuff. Just by me providing information with no judgement or claim to rightness, my folks started to question things themselves.  Not because I was telling them to, because they wanted to.  Eventually, they got right behind my moneyless plans and life.  There's no sign they're going to join me on the path but they are constantly questioning how they live their lives and are making little changes almost weekly. "    

Best wishes, 

Felicity

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!