HEDGE PARSLEY 
9i 
some oval and others almost round, the amateur collector 
might well despair of identifying them. The hedge parsleys 
are among the commonest British wild flowers ; but the great 
majority of people who in spring and summer ramble along 
our country roads and through the fields look upon them as all 
of one species, and never trouble to distinguish one kind from 
another. Frequently even country people, who have lived all 
their lives amid fields, lanes, and hedgerows, are as ignorant 
of the names of wild flowers as the most indifferent town-dweller, 
and when hedge parsleys are pointed out to them they merely 
give a glance at them, and remark, “ Oh, them’s hemlocks,” 
and think they have said all there is to be said about them. 
At the beginning of summer, when the hedge mustard and 
thistles are blooming by the roadside and on the waste grounds, 
and the early parsleys have run to seed, the rough chervil is 
the most conspicuous of the hedge parsleys. Its foliage is 
darker than that of the rest of the plants of its order, and until 
it blossoms its scantily rayed umbels droop as though oppressed 
by the summer heat. Presently, however, they raise them- 
selves, and their white flower clusters become attractive to the 
eye, when seen amid the dull purple of the knapweeds and 
the pale yellow blossoms of the mulleins. A little later, when 
the burdocks are blooming and the wind is wafting everywhere 
the light-winged thistledown, another parsley, distinguished by 
some botanists as the real hedge parsley, displays small umbels 
of pale pink flowers on roadside banks and field borders. It 
is a very wiry plant of erect growth, and it remains in bloom 
until late in the autumn. About the same time that the real 
hedge parsley blooms, the fool’s parsley may be found growing 
much too plentifully in neglected gardens and amid the corn. It 
gained its name through many persons mistaking it for the 
familiar garden parsley ; but it is really one of the most easily 
identified wild flowers in our British flora. This is the plant 
which old Gerard described as having “ a naughty smell,” 
and most of our modern authorities on wi'd flowers agree that 
it has an evil odour. Some of the old herbalists, who had heard 
of country folk gathering the fool’s parsley for the garden variety, 
spoke of it as a deadly plant, and instances have been quoted 
of its having caused delirium, stupor, and even death. 
Mr. F. E. Hulme states that animals will not eat the fool’s 
parsley, and even insects and their larvae seem to avoid it. 
“ We do not remember,” he writes, “ to have ever seen any 
jagged and ragged outline to its foliage, suggesting that some 
caterpillar has been making a meal. Our own live stock we 
have never tempted with it, as the risk of seeing one’s animals 
succumbing to its effects is greater than we care for, interesting 
as it might be to record that a small armful killed a cow in an 
hour and a quarter.” 
