Yesterday, while I was walking the dogs, my eye fell on this umbel that grows along the side of the ditch. It immediately reminded me of the very famous Hogweed. And I immediately kept the lines of the dogs in a reflex very short, because the juice of this plant is not so nice when they come into contact with it. It is certainly not the Giant Hogweed, but the common Hogweed also has the property that its juice can certainly cause skin irritations. What not many people know… is that the Hogweed can also be very useful! But despite that it can be very useful, if you are not sure that you have the common hogweed in front of you ... it is always better to pass these flowers with a large arch and leave them alone.
As much as you want to pick wild… and it is great fun to do that. Eating and perhaps even taking medication directly from nature ... ALWAYS BE CAREFUL WITH UMBELLIFEROUS!
With this family of special flowers that you often see along ditch sides, but also increasingly on the roadsides of highways, you must be 100% sure which flower you are dealing with. There are plants that are very useful, but ... if you make a misinterpretation, it can also lead to your death!
Now that I have emphasized that clearly enough, back to the flowers I saw. After bringing the dogs home and taking my camera I went back to take a closer look. As I got closer, I dared say for about 75% that I was indeed dealing with the common Hogweed here. And that made me be extra careful. Skin irritation or worse blisters is not what I'm waiting for, and that is what this plant can cause. Especially if you have sensitive skin, and the combination of Hogweed with sunlight can cause the blisters very quickly.
Fire blisters CAN occur after you have come into contact with the juice of this plant. The juice contains the substance furanocumarine. This is a strong scented volatile oil that makes our skin hypersensitive to sunlight. The so-called photosensitization.
It may surprise you, but yes, this plant is certainly also useful for several things. You can easily prepare the common Hogweed to a meal. The older leaves of this plant have hairs that can cause mild irritation. You can peel the older leaves like rhubarb and then eat them; you only eat the broad midrib of the leaf. You can simply eat young shoots without precautions. The young plant has no irritating hairs and these stems are perfectly consumable in a pasta dish, oven dish or on a vegetable pancake.
In addition, in Russia and the Baltic States, the stems of common hogweed are left to dry in the sun until they turn yellow so that white, sweet crystals begin to form on the stems. This sweet substance is very reminiscent of sugar and is considered a delicacy.
In addition to being edible, the common Hogweed has a number of medicinal applications.
Dioscorides, a pioneer of medicine and herbal science, wrote that common Hogweed seed can be useful as a medicine for nervous diseases, epilepsy and liver diseases. The seed was mixed with oil and added to a meal porridge of someone who is a 'loosening bulb' or who has a 'flu in his head'. People with a mental illness accompanied by a headache were given a paste of the seed on the head
For those who don't know who Dioscorides was, Dioscorides was a great figure in medicine because he wrote a very important book that was the most important medical textbook for at least 1500 years. Hippocrates may be considered the most important founder of medicine, but doctors used the work of Dioscorides until well into the 17th century. His works were then used as source material for new books to be written.
Common hogweed is no stranger to traditional medicine. This plant has been used for high blood pressure for a long time. A 2013 French study investigated its antihypertensive effect. It turns out that substances in common Hogweed relax the muscles around the veins. In scientific terms, such an effect is called 'vasorelaxant'. This action makes the veins more flexible; it leads to a small enlargement of the vein content. This allows the blood to flow more freely and the blood pressure is lower.
The last thing to know ... in the past, the common Hogweed was used to make the so-called "Beer for the poor". And if you boil the stems in plain water, and then leave it for a few days, you will indeed get a fermented drink that looks a bit like beer.
And a story that goes around is that the seeds of this common Hogweed and the seeds of the Giant Hogweed both have lust and potency enhancing properties. If you want to try it ... be careful when getting the seeds, otherwise you will not have much fun with your alternative Viagra.
