queen anne has hairy legs

a good skill to have if you are a plant picker like me is to know the difference between queen anne’s lace and poison hemlock. they are cousins in the parsley family, but, as in many families, one cousin is an angel and the other is a devil. in this case, one is edible, and the other will kill you in about an hour. fortunately if you remember that “queen anne has hairy legs” (in other words, the stems of the benign queen anne’s lace are hairy and the stems of the poison hemlock are smooth with purple blotches), you should mostly be safe. regardless, i don’t know if i will ever be able to bring myself to eat any part of a queen anne’s lace. i just can’t imagine that the pleasure could equal the worst case scenario risk.

wild carrot, queen anne’s lace