Toothpick weed
Visnaga daucoides
Family · Apiaceae · Irritating
The umbellifer whose umbel, on drying, closes and hardens into a rigid nest of woody rays. Each ray is a toothpick, and that is literally where half of Europe's toothpicks came from.
Fields and pasture · Roadsides and waste ground · Town and roadside
Also known askhella, bishop's weed
How to tell it
A dense, very round white umbel with dozens of thick rays. On drying it folds inward into a hard nest recognisable from metres away. Leaves divided into fine stiff segments, blue-green.
What it is confused with
Wild carrot
Daucus carota
Both close the umbel into a nest on drying. The toothpick weed's turns hard and woody, with rays thick as toothpicks; wild carrot's stays light and fragile. And wild carrot has a hairy stem, this one does not.
What it is for
Toothpicks, the use that named the plant in several languages. It was also an important medicinal plant in Egypt and the Mediterranean. A note that stays on the sheet: it contains furanocoumarins, and contact with the sap followed by sunlight burns the skin, as with fig.
With documented traditional uses. Not a therapeutic indication and not a dose.
Where it occurs
Each square is an area with recorded observations of this plant. The lighter background is the set of areas where any of the entries has been observed, and serves as a reference. Note what this is not: it is not where the plant lives, it is where people record it, so trails and towns always look fuller than the mountains. Data from GBIF.
Sources
Community
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