Blow the froth off

Nodding and waving to passing traffic as it engulfs our roadside verges, exuberant cow parsley is almost unstoppable, says Vicky Liddell, as she takes a closer look at the umbellifer and its sometimes sinister kin

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Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthornhedge. 'Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass 'Silent Noon', Dante Gabriel Rossetti

FROM the beginning of May, every country road and lane is lined with the familiar froth of cow parsley. Fuelled by increasing nitrogen levels in the verges, the exuberance of the plant is unstoppable-mile after mile of it bobs and sways to passing traffic like a never-ending Mexican wave. Cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris), which is also known by the more decorative Queen Anne's lace, is the first in a succession of roadside umbellifers that adorns the countryside from spring to late summer. It belongs to one of the largest plant families in the world with more than 3,700 species, some 100 of which may be found in the UK.

The Umbelliferae or Apiaceae, as they are now known, are easily recognised by their elegant, umbrella-like flowerheads, but can be difficult to distinguish individually and include in their ranks some of our most delicious herbs and vegetables, as well as some of the deadliest poisons. With its fresh green, fern-like leaves and hollow, hairy stems holding aloft creamy umbels, cow parsley is the most widely recognised as it romps away along field margins, woodland edges and anywhere the ground isn't waterlogged. Its flowering coincides with that of the hawthorn and, together in a transient moment in May, they make the landscape look as if it has been sprinkled with flour.

In country churchyards, where cow parsley flourishes, gravestones appear to float magically in a sea of white. Here, as Dr Oliver Rackham wrote in The History of the Countryside, 'the cow parsley are a memento mori for in them is recycled, while awaiting the Last Trump, part of the phosphate of 10,000 skeletons'.

It is particularly striking against a stone-wall backdrop in Cotswold lanes, and, in urban areas, it swathes railway embankments and waste ground in billowing pale clouds.