A Story of a Year

Chapter Three

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March

Oxfordshire, March 2024

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March saw much rain, in the months leading up to what many consider (often unwisely ) to be the first month of spring, but that in reality has been a damp, leaden skied month of never-ending rain.

For what seems like the first day in an eternity, stately pines stand tall in the glow of warm sunlight in the untroubled forest. Near a small stream the poison hemlock, conium maculatum, emerges upwards in clumps, the smooth stems mottled purple and green, its fronds reminiscent of carrot tops. I pull away one small stalk, for curiosity's sake and hold it close enough to my nose to sense the foul, gas-like stench that often will tell you of its presence on the wind, of what is historically one of the most poisonous plants that we know of. An invasive weed, whose toxic alkaloids were used to make a draft to kill Socrates, most poisonous in spring and growing in abundance here with its other relative the Hemlock water dropwort Oenanthe-crocata with its celery-like appearance that grows in clumps by the waterlogged ditches of the pasture. As I have said before, if it looks like wild parsley, it’s probably not.