Hemlock water-dropwort
Oenanthe crocata
Family · Apiaceae · Can kill
Read this before the sheet
This plant, or one that resembles it, is dangerous. Identifying is not authorising: no app has the authority to tell you that you may eat or touch a plant.
Emergency
One of the most poisonous plants in Europe, and far from rare: it grows in ditches, streams and damp margins across the country. The whole plant is toxic, and the root, a bunch of yellowish fingers, is the part that kills.
Streams and ditches · Fields and pasture
Also known asdead man's fingers, water dropwort
How to tell it
Always in damp ground. Leaves with broad, toothed leaflets, like oversized parsley or celery. When cut, the stem releases a yellowish juice that darkens in air. No aniseed smell.
What it is confused with
Fennel
Foeniculum vulgare
Fennel smells of aniseed and has thread-fine leaves. Hemlock water-dropwort has no smell and broad leaflets. When in doubt, the smell decides.
Fool's watercress
Apium nodiflorum
They share the ditch and the leaf shape. Fool's watercress creeps low with even leaflets; hemlock water-dropwort is robust, stands above the knee and has tuberous roots. This is the confusion that makes streamside foraging a bad idea without absolute certainty.
What it is for
None
Do not pick it, taste it or feed it to animals. Recorded poisonings in Portugal almost always come from confusing it with edible streamside plants.
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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