Hemlock no friend to Socrates

The first thing I do in the morning is to open the curtains to see what sort of day it is.

The bedroom is on the ground floor and the window frames a great view of a wild meadow with a hedgerow and a bog beyond, so I often get back into bed for a few minutes to admire the view and plan my day.

I was doing this recently when a movement caught my attention. A few metres outside the window, in the headland of the meadow, was a tall plant which had carried umbrella- like heads of white flowers a few weeks ago. Now the flowers had ripened into clusters of globular brown seeds and a pair of blue tits were balancing delicately on the brittle stalklets and harvesting them.

I thought this was a little foolhardy because they were hemlock seeds and hemlock is among the most poisonous of our wild plants — but birds seem to be able to eat many things that would kill mammals.

I usually avoid botanical names but I have to make an exception for hemlock because the name is used for so many different species of herbaceous plant, and even some evergreen trees. I’m talking about conium maculatum and it was the principal ingredient in the concoction used to execute Socrates, among other lesser known offenders in the ancient world. It’s also an ingredient in the witches’ brew in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

It’s a common native biennial in Ireland and grows taller in its second year, so the one outside my window is probably two years old. The lacy leaves are similar to many related species but the stem is characteristic — hairless, hollow and usually with purple blotches or streaks on the lower part.

It’s poisonous to people and livestock and the poison remains active in dead leaves and stalks for up to three years, so it’s not a good thing to have in hay.

Poisoning is normally caused by eating it, though there are some instances of people becoming unwell after skin contact. There have been few fatalities in recent years and most involve people foraging for wild food. It’s a member of the large carrot family and resembles several edible wild plants such as wild celery, wild parsley and pig-nut.

Nature Table

POPLAR HAWK MOTH (Laothoe populi)

This large moth is the commonest hawk moth in Ireland. It’s one of the species that’s attracted to light, so it quite often turns up on patios or doorsteps if lights are left switched on during summer nights. The hind wings have dark red patches on them but when it’s at rest it draws the hind wings up under the fore wings, which hides these patches and gives the moth a strange and characteristic outline. The head is large and furry with thick antennae like the horns of an antelope. The moths are so large that when they’re in flight they’re sometimes mistaken for bats. The caterpillar is either yellowish-green or bluish-green, sometimes with pale red spots along the sides, and it has a green, rhinoceros-like horn. It feeds on poplar leaves and on related aspen and more commonly in Ireland on willows. This means adult moths are likely to turn up near damp places where willows grow.