🥕 I thought they were 🥕 Carrots
This was an unpleasant surprise. And I checked it over and over again - same result - Poison.
Over winter, I had something sprout, as the title says, and I left it alone to be transplanted. Nice shiny leaves and so fast to grow! It was coming up out of the top of my yet unfinished potato tower #2
Below are the two pictures I sent to three different AI plant identifier programs.
I had only ever heard of Hemlock in old Sherlock Holmes shows I had seen when my parents watched them. Oops, I may be dating myself. But me, myself and I are the same age and we like each other - no harm dating - ca-pfff- tsss.
Here is a close up of the leaves so you can identify it if it blows into your garden one day - God forbid. The finger in the shot is for size context. These leaves look like velvet - but the larger ones are shiny.
As soon as I had confirmed the AI diagnosis, I pulled these up by the roots. I used rubber gloves but I think the leaves touched my forearms. I am not sure if it is psychological or not but I am sensing something on my arms. No rash yet.
If you look at how this grows, it is just like celery, except that the stalks are round instead of curved. But you can see the little baby shoots come out of the base in the middle. I almost cut one and tasted it yesterday, but I chose to do a search before doing that. Talk about luck.
Here is what it looks like when cut. No milky goo inside like some medicinal plants. This next photo will confirm Hemlock as its identity. Two of the names listed on the search were spotted corobane and spotted hemlock. You can see the spots here.
As I said above, I had almost tried this. The round stalk was one tip off. The other was the leaves.
You see, I grew up in the upper mid-west of the country, where Christmas has snow, and I played in a lot of wooded areas. I can identify both poison oak and poison ivy because I have had both of those and they are no fun. Then I learned that any leaf that has a certain kind of shiny reflection, like poison ivy and oak do, should be suspect. I think twice before touching them.
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