Today I decided to prune some shrubberies and cut down some poke weeds. The latter were close to 8 feet tall and amazingly well built for a weed. They were overgrown with wild grape plants and vines covered with stickers. While dragging the prunings back to the burn pile I noticed that the spiders in my boxwood shrubs are back:
I don't much care for boxwoods but I am glad they provide a nice home for millions of spiders.
But that's not what I am here to talk about. Nope, what I am here to discuss today is Heracleum Mantegazzinum, which although it sounds Italian, is actually an extremely dangerous member of the carrot family. Looks benign enough:
Contact with the sap can lead to months of pain or blindness. It causes phytophotodermatitis and while that rolls trippingly off the tongue, I really don't want to experience it. Poison ivy is bad. Poison oak, bad. Poison sumac, worse. Heck, after a lifetime of working with freshly cut black walnut I have now gotten sensitized to the point that I get contact dermatitis when the sap gets on my skin. So when I read that this noxious plant is now invading my space I became concerned. Now I hope I have enough sense to avoid it should I encounter it in the wild.
Where is a flame thrower when you need one?
