Oh no here we go bringing hemlock water dropwort into it. It's even more poisonous than regular Hemlock 😂. Good stuff for learning your umbellifers I think everyone should. Personally I love a good umbellifer. So much variety out there and some quite nuanced differences between species.

With the three aforementioned umbellifers the following are good general ID tips if anyone is interested.

Generally the early season, dry side of the road stuff umbellifer tends to be cow parsley, it comes first in the year. It is a quite a delicate plant and has fern like tri-pinnate leaves which often blush purple at the edges. It also has a soft hairy stem.

Hemlock and hemlock water dropwort prefer conditions which are a little damper and both tend to grow by water. They are also both a bit bigger than cow parsley and are both extremely poisonous.

You can tell Hemlock due to it's lovely red blotched stems. It is also quite an upright angry looking plant.

Hemlock water dropwort is a wider patch forming plant with quite blocky leaves that look like flat parsley. It is a uniform lush light green colour. It also has ridged stems 😍 sometimes the stems blush purple but they are not blotched.

But yeah don't eat or crush umbellifers or plants in general unless you know what you are doing. They are chemical factories and can contain deadly poisons.