Hemp agrimony
Eupatorium cannabinum
Family · Asteraceae · Poisonous
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.
The tall riverbank plant with clouds of fluffy pale pink flowers at the end of summer, and leaves divided into three like cannabis, which gives it its scientific name.
Streams and ditches · Fields and pasture · Roadsides and waste ground
Also known asholy rope, raspberries and cream
How to tell it
An upright reddish stem to two metres. Opposite leaves divided into three to five elongated toothed segments, closely resembling cannabis, which is the reason for the name. Small heads with four to six pale pink florets each, gathered in broad dense corymbs at the top, fluffy in appearance.
What it is confused with
No dangerous lookalikes known in the Iberian Peninsula.
What it is for
It was a much used medicinal plant and is no longer recommended: it contains pyrrolizidine alkaloids, which accumulate in the liver and cause irreversible damage with repeated use, even at low doses. It is among Europe's best butterfly nectar plants, and is worth more looked at than drunk.
With documented traditional uses. Not a therapeutic indication and not a dose.