Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Any of various coarse weedy plants of the genus Heracleum of the parsley family, having divided leaves and small flowers in umbels, and including several species that are phototoxic.
- noun Any of various other coarse weeds, such as horseweed or ragweed.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun One of several plants, as Heracleum Sphondylium, Polygonum aviculare, and Ambrosia artemisiæfolia. The poisonous hogweed is Aristolochia grandiflora of the West Indies.
- noun In the West Indies, any one of several plants of the genus Boerhaavia, especially B. erecta, which is much relished by hogs.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun A common weed (
Ambrosia artemisiæge ). Seeambrosia , 3. - noun In England, the
Heracleum Sphondylium .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Any coarse weedy herb.
- noun An
umbelliferous plant, of genus Heracleum, some of them being poisonous. - noun Certain plants from the genera
Ambrosia , Erigeron, or Heracleum.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun tall coarse plant having thick stems and cluster of white to purple flowers
Etymologies
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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"It's a very exciting time as chefs are rediscovering forgotten ingredients like woodruff, as well a new ones such as hogweed seeds that we appear not to have cooked with, despite them being delicious."
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Hence why, 12 hours later, I'm learning to pick nettles, hogweed, and rosebay willowherbs in a thicket on Hampstead Heath.
Eating for £1 a day 2011
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The headlands, though, are a different matter for they still form burgeoning banks of blossom – hogweed, vetch and newly opened harebells.
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Gatherings of flies on the tall, white plate flowers of hogweed; burnet moths swinging on the yellow, sweetly scented lady's bedstraw; soldier beetles copulating wildly on their grass stems: these creatures were drawn to plants as places, to be inhabited by animal passions.
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This is hogweed—you can use the flower buds, the stems and the leaf.
Modern Hunter-Gatherers Bruce Palling 2011
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I know the name doesn't conjure a thing of particular beauty but, for my money, hogweed is one of the glories of Claxton in June.
Country diary 2010
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My two girls, who themselves had grown like hogweed in recent years, beg me not to tell anyone, lest they think me strange.
Country diary 2010
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Other members of the umbellifer family draw in the beetles and the hoverflies, but nothing quite magnetises the invertebrate world like flowering hogweed.
Country diary 2010
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The day has been damp and close, full of ripening blackberries and hogweed seeds; edgy as stinging nettles and the caterwauling of young peregrines over the quarry.
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Through a gate into a field and around the hogweed flowers which have become white fields for herds of tiny black beetles grazing on pollen, the first gatekeeper butterfly appears.
hernesheir commented on the word hogweed
The hogweed Heracleum sphondylium is also known as cow parsnip.
November 12, 2011
sionnach commented on the word hogweed
It's a hogweed. It's a cowparsnip. It's a horseradish. It's catnip. It's a lambkin.
It's very confused.
November 12, 2011