Cow Parsnip - Heracleum lanatum - is a member of the carrot family. It has well-known non-native wild cousins: Queen Anne's lace (Daucus), wild fennel (Foeniculum), and poison hemlock (Conium). The family is united by its umbel-type inflorescences, pungent smell, and often irritative qualities. Our cultivated carrots, celery, and parsley have this family's gift of strong smell and flavor without the skin rash-causing qualities.
Cow parsnip are fairly tall but understated plants, normally found in wet areas, whether seeps in an open field, or a roadside ditch, or in a shady riparian area. These photos were of one individual growing on a stream bank by Hwy 1 just south of Westport (Chadbourne Gulch, a.k.a. Blues Beach). Arthropods of all kinds - beetles, flies, spiders, caterpillars - were all over the new blooms and got into most of the shots...
When you get up close, the beauty of the flowers becomes more apparent than from afar.
The inflorescence is an umbel (umbrella-shaped) spread of smaller umbels that radiate from a single point at the top of the stem. The hundreds of tiny flowers form a flat network that makes an intricate floral pattern, and a nice platform for the insects.
Underneath the inflorescence was a nice shady place for a spider web.
Also blooming in said riparian corridor were Coltsfoot (Petasites), which will be featured next...
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