Mid-spring flowers are at their peak in the woods, but some of the earlier spring flowers are still blooming.
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A Walk in Bird Park, Mount Lebanon
Wild Geranium (Geranium maculatum). 
Wild Geranium (Geranium maculatum), photographed May 16. Dame’s Rocket (Hesperis matronalis). Virginia Waterleaf (Hydrophyllum virginianum). Long-Styled Sweet Cecily (Osmorhiza longistylis). Long-Styled Sweet Cecily (Osmorhiza longistylis). Blue Phlox (Phlox divaricata). Creeping Buttercup (Ranunculus repens). -
Poison Hemlock (Conium maculatum)
Poison Hemlock grows very tall very fast. It bears innumerable compound umbels of flowers like Queen Anne’s Lace, but the plants are much larger (and of course much more poisonous), usually with a whitish bloom on the stalks. It was almost certainly introduced into this country intentionally, which tells us more about our ancestors than we wanted to know.
These plants were growing in South Side Park, where they were photographed May 30.
For a fuller description, see the Conium maculatum reference page.
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Goutweed (Aegopodium podagraria)
Photographed May 29. Goutweed is a popular groundcover that has gone native. It likes shade and damp areas, and it can take over large tracts of wet forest. The compound umbels (that is, flat-topped clusters of flat-topped clusters) of flowers will remind you of its relative Queen Anne’s Lace (Daucus carota); the leaves bear a superficial resemblance to elderberry leaves, and the flower umbels to elderberry umbels, whence Goutweed is also known as Ground Elder. It blooms in late spring. Some of the plants in these pictures were found in Bird Park, Mount Lebanon, and the others in West End Park.
Photographed June 3. The plants are similar to Spotted Cowbane (Cicuta maculata), and Father Pitt has misidentified them in the past. Here are differences to look for:
Spotted Cowbane has purplish stems or stems “streaked with purple” (says Gray); Goutweed has green stems.
The stalks of Spotted Cowbane are fatter than the stalks of Goutweed.
The flower clusters or “compound umbels” of Spotted Cowbane are more numerous and sloppier (“pedicels very unequal”) than the compound umbels of Goutweed.
Finally, Goutweed tends to grow in large and dense colonies, which is why it was popular as a ground cover.
Gray describes the genus and the species:
AEGOPÔDIUM L. GOUTWEED. Fruit ovate, glabrous, with equal filiform ribs, and no oil-tubes; stylopodium conical and prominent; seed nearly terete. — A coarse glabrous perennial, with creeping rootstock, sharply toothed ovate leaflets, and rather large naked umbels of white flowers. (Name from aix, goat, and podion, a little foot, probably from the shape of the leaflets.)
A. podagrària L. —Waste-heaps, etc., e. Mass. to Del. (Adv. from Eu.) [It has since spread further, mostly by escaping from gardens.]
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Clustered Black Snakeroot (Sanicula gregaria)
It’s harder than it ought to be to find information about this species: many standard wildflower books skip it, but it is abundant in Frick Park, where it forms huge colonies. These plants were blooming in late May. Greenish-yellow flowers with very long (in proportion to the flower) stamens and lower leaves with five roughly equal leaflets are distinguishing marks. Other species of Black Snakeroot around here have white flowers and compound leaves with the lower pair of leaflets split almost to the base.
Gray describes the genus and the species:
SANÍCULA [Tourn.] L. SANICLE. BLACK SNAKEROOT. Calyx-teeth manifest, persistent. Fruit globular; the carpels not separating spontaneously, ribless, thickly clothed with hooked prickles. — Perennial rather tall glabrous herbs, with few palmately lobed or parted leaves, those from the base long-petioled. Umbels irregular or com pound, the flowers (greenish or yellowish) capitate in the umbellets, perfect, and with staminate ones intermixed. Involucre and involucels few-leaved. (Name said to be from sanare, to heal; or perhaps from San Nicolas.)
Styles much exceeding the bristles of the fruit, recurved.
S. gregària Bicknell. Stem slender, 6 dm. high; leaves 5-foliolate; leaflets obovate, cleft and serrate; fruit only 3-4(-6) mm. long, somewhat stipitate. — Rich woods, St. John Valley, N. В.; s. N. H. to Minn., Ark., and Ga.
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Sweet Cicely (Osmorhiza claytonii)
A small relative of Queen Anne’s Lace, this one grows in the woods and bears its few-flowered umbels in spring. This plant was growing along the Trillium Trail, Fox Chapel, where it was blooming in the middle of May. The fern-like leaves are distinctive. A similar species, O. longistylis, is not hairy, and thus easy to distinguish.
Gray describes the genus and the species (which he spells Claytoni):
OSMORHÏZA Raf. SWEET CICELY. Calyx-teeth obsolete. Fruit with prominent caudate attenuation at base, and equal ribs. — Glabrous to hirsute perennials with thick aromatic roots, ternately compound leaves, ovate variously toothed leaflets, few-leaved in volucres, and white flowers in few-rayed and few-fruited umbels. (Name from osme, a scent, and rhiza, a root.) Washingtonia Raf.
O. Claytoni (Michx.) Clarke. Stems rather slender, 8-9 dm. high, vinous-pubescent; leaves <2-3-ternate, crisp-hairy; leaflets mostly 4-7 cm. long, acuminate, crenate-dentate and somewhat cleft; stipules ciliate-hispid; fruit (not including the attenuate base) 1-1.8 cm. long; stylopodium and style 0.7-1 mm. long. (O. brevistylis DC; Washingtonia Claytoni Britton.) — Open woods, e. Que. to w. Ont., s. to N. С, Ala., Mo., and Kan.
