The Magical Uses of Hemlock

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Photo by William & Wilma Follette @ USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database / USDA NRCS. 1992./Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Excerpted from Garden Witch's Herbal: Green Magick, Herbalism & Spirituality (c) 2009 by Ellen Dugan. Used by permission. Llewellyn Worldwide, Ltd. www.llewellyn.com. The following excerpt can be found on Pages 166 to 167. 

Hemlock (Conium maculatum). Folk names include warlock’s weed, winter fern, water hemlock, poison hemlock, spotted hemlock, spotted cowbane, and water parsley. This is a biennial plant native to Europe, but it now also grows widely throughout America. It flourishes in waste areas and damp habitats.

According to herbal history, death by hemlock poisoning was the official method of execution in ancient Athens. Hemlock contains the extremely toxic alkaloid coniine in all of its parts, but most particularly in the seeds. Socrates was a famous victim of this toxic plant. The plant is often mistaken for fennel (Foeniculum vulgare). However, the fennel plant has foliage that is described as airy and feathery. I think fennel foliage looks like the delicate asparagus fern, and to help you with further identification, the fennel flowers are aromatic and yellow.

Another hemlock look-alike is the wild carrot, also known as Queen Anne’s lace (Daucus carota). The flowers of Queen Anne’s lace typically have a central floret that is purple. Another noted feature of this wildflower are the hairy stems, and you’ll also notice that as the flowers of Queen Anne’s lace wither, they contract into bowl-like shapes into which the seeds fall.