Talk:Heracleum sphondylium

Cow parsnip?

This article had treated "cow parsnip" as a common name for H. sphondylium. I believe this is a common name for the North American species H. maximum, which is sometimes treated (although not in Wikipedia) as a subspecies of H. spondylium. I'm finding little convincing evidence that cow parsnip is a common name for H. sphondylium in a strict sense (rather than being included as a common name for the broad sense species concept). Searching Google for .uk "cow parsnip" has far fewer results than for "hogweed", and many of the results are explicitly referring to the plant in North America. Do people in Europe actually use cow parsnip as a common name for the plant found there?Plantdrew (talk) 21:43, 8 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't think "cow parsnip" is widely used in the UK. We do use "cow parsley" to refer to a very common plant, but is Anthriscus sylvestris. The common name for H. spondylium in the UK is "common hogweed". (Saying "hogweed" alone would probably lead to confusion with giant hogweed as it is frequently in the news.) Jon.baldwin (talk) 22:21, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Cow parsnip is referred to by Clapham, Tutin and Warburg, but not by BSBI, Stace 3 or Blamey et al. Hogweed is the name most commonly used for H. sphondylium, but most people also know what is meant by cow parsnip. Heracleum mantegazzianum is called giant hogweed in UK without any apparent confusion. Plantsurfer 23:42, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Photo Phytodermatitis needs a mention

I got photo-phyto-dermatitis cutting down these plants. The Giant Hogweed is well known for this effect but the Common Hogweed can also cause this effect. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.149.206.29 (talk) 11:24, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Petals

Heracleum sphondylium My books do not mention the petals which in the outer flowers which show deep forks. This is a useful point. I see it in the photos of this species in Google! Can I insert them in Wikipedia - or should I?Osborne 19:06, 6 October 2016 (UTC)Osborne 20:01, 13 October 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia summarizes what reliable published sources report about the subject. If your books (and other published sources) don't mention those petals, we should not draw our own conclusions from images found via Google; that would be considered original research, and Wikipedia is not the place for it. Huon (talk) 13:01, 15 October 2016 (UTC)

External links modified

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Biennial?

The introduction to this article claims that this species is a "perennial or biennial plant" but I can find no evidence of the latter. AFAICT, all species of the Heracleum genus are perennial. Am I missing something? Thanks in advance. Tom Scavo (talk) 13:50, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

I added "citation needed" to the biennial claim. I am still searching for evidence one way or the other. Unless evidence is found, I recommend that the biennial claim be removed. Tom Scavo (talk) 14:11, 18 October 2018 (UTC)

How to tell common hogweed apart from similar toxic hogweeds???

How to tell common hogweed apart from, say, Heracleum sosnowskyi??? 81.89.66.133 (talk) 10:41, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

This isn't exactly what you're looking for but here's a comparison of Heracleum mantegazzianum and Heracleum maximum. Tom Scavo (talk) 21:23, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

Biennial or perennial?

(I'm coming back to this since I think the issue is still not resolved.) In the description, Heracleum sphondylium is said to be a biennial plant. I don't have access to the given source [Tutin 1980] to confirm but note that [Sheppard 1991] claims that the species is a polycarpic perennial (to confirm that he makes this claim, click the link in the citation). Later in his article, Sheppard says "Heracleum sphondylium is a semi-rosette hemicryptophyte. The species is most commonly a facultatively polycarpic perennial, and not a biennial as often stated (e.g. Tutin 1980)." So one source specifically refutes the other. Does someone have access to a reliable, post-1991 source that can help resolve this issue? Thanks! Tom Scavo (talk) 00:52, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

In the meantime, I rewrote the description in favor of perennial but retained the citation that claims it's a biennial. Tom Scavo (talk) 15:34, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

The word "biennial" was removed from the lead paragraph. I'm inclined to leave the rest of the article as-is. Comments? Tom Scavo (talk) 17:35, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

Petal color

The article states that Heracleum sphondylium "has 5-petalled pinkish or white flowers" and even depicts pink (not white) flowers in a side photo. However other authors [e.g., Sheppard 1991] seem to agree that the petals are "white, greenish-white or rarely pink". Linnaeus did not mention the pink form at all. He described the flowers of Heracleum sibiricum as follows: "Flores bujus viridi-lutei, at prioris albi", or "The flowers of the umbel are greenish-yellow but the former [H. sphondylium] are white". So I think this needs to change in the article. Comments? Tom Scavo (talk) 22:49, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Nevertheless, most authors of plant guides, such as Stace 4, Blamey etal, Clapham, Tutin and Warburg, etc. recognise the existence of pinkish or purplish variants. Stace says "petals white or pinkish-white to purplish". Other authors generally emphasise that pinks are less common. So the only changes needed to the article are to reflect that fact and quote Stace as RS. Plantsurfer 10:22, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

That's a great improvement, thanks for making that change. As far as the image is concerned, I think it should remain but another image with white flowers should be added. The image captions should be adjusted to support the text. Tom Scavo (talk) 14:02, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

Ecology section created

I've created section Ecology (per WP:Plants). Over the next few days, I'll be moving existing content into that new section. Actually, I don't know how long that process will take since any given cut-and-paste operation can be rather time-consuming. Thanks in advance for your patience. Tom Scavo (talk) 19:58, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

I'm done moving content into the new section. Tom Scavo (talk) 17:37, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

Similar species

As noted in the text, the section with heading "Similar species" needs clarification. I propose that a subset of that section be moved to the section on "Uses" since the reader should be cautioned about poisonous look-alikes. Agreed? Tom Scavo (talk) 17:45, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

Unless someone objects, I'm inclined to delete the content in this section and start from scratch. None of the citations have anything to do with Heracleum sphondylium. Comments? Tom Scavo (talk) 08:16, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

I support the deletion of that section. Plantsurfer 09:58, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Please review. Tom Scavo (talk) 16:33, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

yes, much better Plantsurfer 19:25, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

Tropicos subspecies

@Trscavo:, Tropicos functions differently from POWO and WFO. Tropicos itself doesn't take any position on subjective matters of taxonomy; it doesn't "accept" any taxa. Tropicos does list sources that do take subjective positions. The Tropicos record for Heracleum sphondylium subsp. montanum has a tab with "Accepted Names" and a tab with "References". The "References" tab is for sources that accept a particular name. The "Accepted Names" tab gives sources that treat a name as a synonym, and gives the name accepted by those sources. The References sources for subsp. montanum are from 1974 and 1986. The Accepted Names source is from 2018, and there is a link to the Tropicos record for Heracleum maximum. That record has a "Synonyms" tab, where Heracleum sphondylium subsp. montanum is listed.

The "Synonyms" and "Accepted Names" tabs are complementary. A name that has an "Accepted Names" tab is a synonym (in the given sources), and that source should appear in the "Synonyms" tab of the accepted name. Plantdrew (talk) 22:41, 28 August 2023 (UTC)

@Plantdrew: Thanks for the Tropicos tutorial, I was probably using it incorrectly. I agree that row in the table should be fixed, but since Tropicos is so different (apples and oranges?), perhaps the column should be deleted altogether? Tom Scavo (talk) 13:53, 29 August 2023 (UTC)

@Trscavo:, I think the Tropicos column should be deleted. Plantdrew (talk) 16:21, 31 August 2023 (UTC)

Okay, I deleted the Tropicos column. Also, since [Sheppard 1991] bases its list of subspecies on Flora Europaea, I replaced the former citation with the latter. Finally, I reordered the columns so that Flora Europaea is listed first. Tom Scavo (talk) 13:44, 1 September 2023 (UTC)