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Hooked bristles and slender, curved styles protrude from
the little burr-like seeds, that any creature passing by may give
them a lift to fresh colonizing land! The firm bluish-green
leaves, palmately divided into from five to seven oblong,
irregularly saw-edged segments, the upper leaves seated on the
stem, the lower ones long-petioled, help us to identify this
common weed.
With splendid, vigorous gesture the COW-PARSNIP (Heracleum
lanatum) rears itself from four to eight feet above moist, rich
soil from ocean to ocean in circumpolar regions as in temperate
climes. A perfect Hercules for coarseness and strength does it
appear when contrasted with some of the dainty members of the
carrot tribe. In June and July, when a myriad of winged creatures
are flying, large, compound, many-rayed umbels of both
hermaphrodite and male white flowers are spread to attract their
benefactors the flies, of which twenty-one species visit them
regularly, besides small bees, wasps, and other short-tongued
insects, which have no difficulty in licking up the freely
exposed nectar.


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