Yeah, I am not botanical enough to get this, but presumably it’s something poisonous?
Apiaceae, the carrot family, is full of wild species that are incredibly poisonous. Basically if it looks like a carrot in the wild dont eat it or you might die.
Same goes for if it looks like a Tomato, those are nightshades and the only ones I know about that aren’t deadly to eat are tomatoes and peppers, and the peppers only because the poison they developed doesn’t kill you it just makes you feel like your entire digestive tract is on fire.
Eggplants, potatoes, ground cherries, tomatillos, huckleberries are all edible too. That said you are right, if it is growing in the wild assume it will kill you. Don’t eat it.
Look up “Sardonic Grin”. It’s one of those things that makes you think this is interesting, and also never going to eat wild plants again.
Well, if you are just avoiding Apiaceae (the carrot family) plants aren’t that hard to ID safely and the likelihood of you poisoning yourself should drop by a lot. But yeah, you’d need to learn a bit about plants in the first place and not a lot of people are motivated enough to do that.
Or hallucinogenic? Although if there were an easy-to-forage hallucinogen that looked like celery I’m pretty sure I’d know about it.
Apparently it is indeed referring to hemlock (Oenanthe crocata):
Contains oenanthotoxin. The leaves may be eaten safely by livestock, but the stems and especially the carbohydrate-rich roots are much more poisonous. Animals familiar with eating the leaves may eat the roots when these are exposed during ditch clearance – one root is sufficient to kill a cow, and human fatalities are also known in these circumstances. Scientists at the University of Eastern Piedmont in Italy claimed to have identified this as the plant responsible for producing the sardonic grin, and it is the most-likely candidate for the “sardonic herb”, which was a neurotoxic plant used for the ritual killing of elderly people in Phoenician Sardinia. When these people were unable to support themselves, they were intoxicated with this herb and then dropped from a high rock or beaten to death. Criminals were also executed in this way.
(From Wiki page on poisonous plants)
But the main wiki page on Oenanthe crocata doesn’t even mention this.
Holy fuck, Sardinia. Being dropped from a great height or beaten to death by people I held as babies while tripping sounds like one of the worst ways to go.
