There was a plant growing in my vegetable patch. It had a kind of beauty. I did not know what it was. It could have been something I’d planted, but most likely it hadn’t been. Still I watered it and nurtured it and it grew. As my beans were nibbled away and my onion sets remained stubbornly the same size and my strawberry plant bore two pitiful flowers this plant held out delicate leaves and stretched for the skies towering over my fly bitten carrots and dying chives.
It was when it flowered that I became suspicious.
I yanked it out and threw it onto the heap.
But I still wanted to learn its name.
Some time ago a friend had given me a book of wild flowers. It was a lovely second hand book called ‘The Observer Book of Wild Flowers’. It is a delightful book. Its previous owner had marked with tiny pencil ticks the flowers they had spotted: silver weed, hare’s-foot trefoil and red campion. All glorious names.
So I hoped that mine would be in there too.
It was!
It was described perfectly: the leaves bluish green in tint. Umbels and involucre- bits that hang down beneath the umbels.
I read on to the end to see if it was edible only to read: “The entire plant is evil-smelling and said to be poisonous.”
And then I read again its name which described both me and the plant at the same time: Fool’s Parsley!
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