ack ack ack ack ack ack ack     PARSNIPS   ack ack ack ack ack ack ack

Remember parsnips, those nasty, acrid wanna-be carrots that sit on your uvula and repeatedly kick you in the gag reflex? When my mother said I had to sit at the table until I ate all of my parsnips, there was only one reasonable response. “Then this is where I’ll grow up.”  Well, it turns out there’s something even worse than parsnips! There are attack parsnips. 

Meet the Wild Parsnip, aka Pastinaca Sativa. Sounds like Silvio Berlusconi’s latest love interest, but he’d regret that liaison.

Here’s what you need to know about Wild Parsnips:

1.          You do not have one Wild Parsnip. If you have one, you have 

             thousands.

2.         You cannot kill a Wild Parsnip.

3.         A Wild Parsnip will laugh at you if you try to kill it.

4.          They disguise themselves as Queen Anne’s Lace.

5.          No matter how mad you get, you don’t want to touch them.

Ever.

Oh, you may think it’s no big deal to touch a Wild Parsnip. You grab one and say, “What’s the big deal?”  Indeed it is a big deal, a big deal called photodermatitis. 


Wild Parsnips have chemical components called furanocoumarins. (That’s probably why parsnips taste so nasty.) Furanocoumarins get all excited when hit by UV light; they are photoactivated. Touch a parsnip, let the sun shine on the spot it contacted, and that area will become red, begin to itch, and then blister. The itching will not be a problem for long; that’s because the pain that follows will make you forget about it. If you get a good exposure you can erode your skin and deeper tissues.

We have been lucky not to have invasive Mustard Garlic in our woods, but Wild Parsnips have crept across the county. They love the ditches and sunny fields.These plants start out as flat rosettes on the ground. They put up tall stems (3-4 feet high) with leaves and then multiple yellow flowers. You can dig, pull, mow, cut, burn, and spray these plants. Then you can listen to them snickering. They just call in reinforcements. Most people let them do their thing, but I have a need to eradicate parsnips of any kind. I do admit that one of the silliest things I ever uttered was, “I got them all this time!”

I guess there’s some poetic justice when The Girl Who Wouldn’t Eat Parsnips ends up being haunted by Wild Killer Parsnips for the rest of her life.

For a photo gallery of Wild Parsnips, cut and paste this ginormous address:

http://images.search.yahoo.com/images/view?back=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.search.yahoo.com%2Fsearch%2Fimages%3F_adv_prop%3Dimage%26va%3Dwild%2Bparsnips%26fr%3Daaplw&w=531&h=425&imgurl=www.wiseacre-gardens.com%2Fplants%2Fwildflower%2Fwild_parsnip_foliage.jpg&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wiseacre-gardens.com%2Fplants%2Fwildflower%2Fparsnip_wild.html&size=139KB&name=Wild+Parsnip+-+f...&p=wild+parsnips&oid=f97531296510b13d02ab3eff29c4be81&fr2=&no=8&tt=2030&sigr=123mlvhfe&sigi=123a4dk6q&sigb=12mlku2sj&.crumb=Suv5Qbrozs7