Bonus feature – looks like some common stuff that normally grows around there such as queen Ann’s lace.
There’s been a bit of a fuss about it in Scotland recently, too (warning: link contains giant blisters).
There were stories in the 1980s about children getting facial blisters after using the stems as peashooters.
Also came here to point out how similar this stuff looks to Queen Anne’s Lace, a very common weed (at least here in Western Washington).
The main difference (from looking at other photos) seems to be scale. Queen Anne’s lace grows maybe 1-2 feet tall, while this Giant Hogweed, as the name implies, can get pretty big–6 feet or more.
Here’s Queen Anne’s Lace, for comparison:
Information is lacking. Was this not found in Michigan before? From where is it spreading?
There are already warning signs about it in some places in Ontario. Wild parsnip is similarly terrifying:
Yeah, but it’s a lot taller than Queen Annes Lace.
Relevant…
Oh, you mean cow parsley and giant cow parsley. I never realised the big stuff was poisonous.
What kind of idiot thinks “sure, it can blister and blind you, but it sure is pretty, let’s import it”?
A primary authority on such things, lets just call him, G of R, tells me that that is ‘fools parsley.’
Mmmmmm… tall, prolific, venomous plants that blind their victims?
Are those plants related to TRIFFIDS?!
Everything in that picture is giant. Maybe those are just miniature kids.
Decorative, but noxious plants have historically been used as boundary plants when a fence was not wanted (or not considered sufficient for security).
exactly - how do we tell this from benign Queen Annes Lace?
it’s way way bigger, 6 to 18(!) feet tall, as opposed to queen anne’s lace which (at least here in oregon) is more like 1 to 2 feet tall.
So if you see what looks like freakishly huge queen anne’s lace growing somewhere outside of, like, a clearly labelled garden, you should probably let whoever would be in charge of that area know so they can get rid of it, it’s literally a hazmat suit job.
See the above picture, it is called GIANT hogweed for a reason.
It’s easy - Queen Ann’s lace tastes different.
Whoever said this was uncommon in the US has no idea what they are talking about. We have been holding eradication days to get this out of Iowa stream corridors for years.
