A bug's eye view of cow parsley

 

At this time of year, the woodland edges – and many verges – around here in Cambridgeshire are billowing with frothy cow parsley.  You can’t miss it; it’s all green stems and leaves and umbels of tiny white flowers. It is an important springtime plant but unless the Sun catches it at just the right angle it’s not, taken individually, an attractive plant in comparison to some!  It’s an untidy-looking thing that only its mother could love.

It is a member of the carrot family and is edible if rather ‘meh’; I've not tried it but apparently it tastes like a cross between parsley and something a little bit like aniseed.  It’s sometimes known as wild chervil.  Be warned, though – it looks very similar to other plants including hemlock (although hemlock blooms later, in the summer, than cow parsley.  In the UK, cow parsley is sometimes called ‘mummy die,’ a dire threat to dissuade children from eating it, so as to prevent them eating hemlock by mistake.  Socrates’ ghost would tell them that hemlock is best avoided.

But: If you look at cow parsley differently, it’s stunning.  I took this ‘bug’s eye view’ photo on a local WWT reserve one day, and I was really taken with the different air it gave it.