Yellow and Orange 



Wild or Field Parsnip; Madnep; Tank 



{Pasiinaca sativa) Carrot family 



Flowers — Dull or greenish yellow, small, without involucre or in- 

 volucels ; borne in 7 to 15 rayed umbels, 2 to 6 in. across. 

 Stem : 2 to 5 ft. tall, stout, smooth, branching, grooved, from 

 a long, conic, fleshy, strong-scented root. Leaves: Com- 

 pounded (pinnately), of several pairs of oval, lobed, or cut, 

 sharply toothed leaflets ; the petioled lower leaves often i}4 

 ft. long. 



Preferred Habitat — Waste places, roadsides, fields. 



Flowering Season — June — September. 



Distribution — Common throughout nearly all parts of the United 

 States and Canada. Europe. 



Men are not the only creatures who feed upon such of the 

 umbel-bearing plants as are innocent — parsnips, celery, parsley, 

 carrots, caraway, and fennel, among others; and even those which 

 contain properties that are poisonous to highly organized men and 

 beasts, afford harmless food for insects. Pliny says that parsnips, 

 which were cultivated beyond the Rhine in the days of Tiberius, 

 were brought to Rome annually to please the emperor's exacting 

 palate ; yet this same plant, which has overrun two continents, in its 

 wild state (when its leaves are a paler yellowish green than under 

 cultivation) often proves poisonous. A strongly acrid juice in the 

 very tough stem causes intelligent cattle to let it alone — precisely the 

 object desired. But caterpillars of certain swallow-tail butterflies, 

 particularly of the common eastern swallow-tail {Papilio asterias), 

 may be taken on it — the same greenish, black-banded, and yellow- 

 dotted fat " worm " found on parsnips, fennel, and parsley in the 

 kitchen garden. Insects understood plant relationships ages be- 

 fore Linnaeus defined them. When we see this dark, velvety 

 butterfly, marked with yellow, hovering above the wild parsnip, 

 we may know she is there only to lay eggs that her larvae may eat 

 their way to maturity on this favorite food store. After the flat, 

 oval, shining seeds with their conspicuous oil tubes are set in the 

 spreading umbels, the strong, vigorous plant loses nothing of its 

 decorative charm. 



From April to June the lower-growing Early or Golden 

 Meadow Parsnip {Zi^ia aurea) spreads its clearer yellow umbels 

 above moist fields, meadows, and swamps from New Brunswick 

 and Dakota to the Gulf of Mexico. Its leaves are twice or thrice 

 compounded of oblong, pointed, saw-edged, but not lobed leaflets. 



The Hairy-jointed Meadow Parsnip {Thaspium barbinode), 

 another early bloomer, with pale-yellow flowers, most common 



323 



