Yarrow is a healing plant, used in salves and teas, and grows on spindly stalks with fern like leaves and clusters of tiny white flowers.
Queen Anne’s Lace is a pretty plant, that some have used for some healing properties as well, and it too, grows on spindly but hairy stalks, with fern like leaves, and an umbrella of tiny white flowers.
Poison Hemlock, well, it’s poisonous, as the name says. It, too, grows on a spindly stalk with purple streaks, and sorta fern like leaves and clusters of tiny white flowers.
They all look similar. You have to study to determine which plant you have growing in your backyard or the fields or alleys near you. You have to examine the stalks and the leaves and the flowers and learn the difference. Your life depends on it.
You should wear gloves and a mask when you pull up and remove the hemlock, because it could throw it’s tiny toxicity around and make you ill. You don’t want it to choke out other plants, you want to remove it, so it doesn’t make you or others sick by accident.
Yarrow won’t make you ill. It will help heal cuts and scrapes and other issues. It smells different than Hemlock, too.
But you don’t know which is which until you learn the difference.
Just like right now – you don’t know who around you is carrying a virus that could cause you harm until there is evidence. The person walking down the grocery store aisle in front of you may have just come from a meeting where only half the people wore masks, and thus this person is now infected and doesn’t know it and won’t know if for a few days, but they are be-bopping down the aisle breathing out the tiny virus, mask-less. If you wear a mask and don’t touch your eyes, nose, or mouth, then you have better odds than the person without a mask or the person talking on their phone or scratching their itchy nose.
There are millions of analogies out there right now. And honestly, if you’re the type of person who is going to argue over wearing a mask to prevent the spread of a virus, then you’re probably the same type of person who doesn’t care that the white flowered weed you just pulled up bare handed could kill you, too.
Pay attention to those who have learned and written down the information; they are called Scientists. And the things they share can tell you the risks you take in the world around you, and will help save your life, even if you’re one of the dumb ones.
