poison hemlock

Also found in: Thesaurus, Medical, Legal, Encyclopedia, Wikipedia.

poison hemlock

A highly poisonous plant (Conium maculatum) in the parsley family, native to Eurasia and Africa and widely naturalized in North America, having a stout stem, bipinnately compound leaves, and compound umbels of small white flowers.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

poison hemlock

(Plants) the US name for hemlock¹

Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged, 12th Edition 2014 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011, 2014

hem•lock

(ˈhɛmˌlɒk)

n.

1. a poisonous plant, Conium maculatum, of the parsley family, having finely divided leaves and umbels of small white flowers.

2. a poisonous drink made from this plant.

3. any of various related plants, esp. of the genus Cicuta, as the water hemlock.

4. Also called hem′lock spruce′. any of several tall coniferous trees of the genus Tsuga, of the pine family, having short, blunt needles and small cones.

5. the soft, light wood of a hemlock tree, used in making paper and in construction.

[before 900; Middle English hemlok, humlok, Old English hymlic, hemlic; perhaps akin to Old English hymele hop plant]

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Switch to new thesaurus

Noun

poison hemlock - large branching biennial herb native to Eurasia and Africa and adventive in North America having large fernlike leaves and white flowers; usually found in damp habitats; all parts extremely poisonous

California fern, Conium maculatum, Nebraska fern, poison parsley, winter fern, hemlock

Conium, genus Conium - small genus of highly toxic biennials: hemlock

poisonous plant - a plant that when touched or ingested in sufficient quantity can be harmful or fatal to an organism

Mentioned in ?

References in periodicals archive ?

Unlike Socrates, who drank the poison hemlock as a mark of respect for the laws that convicted him, Praljack rejected the legitimacy of the court and his conviction and committed suicide in the face of the court to show contempt for the international tribunal and its laws.

Deaths in custody of court and courtroom

Toxicological Examination for Poison Hemlock Alkaloids--

Conium maculatum Intoxication: Literature Review and Case Report on Hemlock Poisoning

11, 2001, next to the corpse of Argentine Marxist revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara and next to Greek philosopher Socrates as he drank the cup of poison hemlock.

Selfie fans now a nuisance at funerals

Others that are seriously poisonous, such as poison hemlock, can be easy to identify.

Weed eaters

Is this plant wild lettuce, poison hemlock or giant hogweed?

The dark side of nature: Poisonous plants

The counterintuitive concepts involved with prescribing poisons, snake venoms, toad sweat, poison mushrooms, arsenic, strychnine, and in this case poison hemlock, the famous poison used to kill Socrates, takes a few minutes.

Monthly miracles: poison Hemlock to the Rescue

A different sculpture, Poison hemlock through three rooms., a version of which debuted at New York's Marianne Boesky Gallery in January 2013, features a brass pipe running across the floor that was (ostensibly) filled with the infamous Socrates-killing substance.

Jason Dodge

Poisonous relatives of this family include poison hemlock (Conium maculatum) and water hemlock (Cicuta spp.), whose toxicity is comparable to arsenic while an eighth as lethal as cyanide.

How the carrot became domesticated: origins of root vegetable are fairly clear, while the history of its cultivation is still a bit cloudy

The common name of Tsuga, a genus of conifers in the pine family, is "hemlock," supposedly because the crushed foliage smells like that of an unrelated plant, poison hemlock (Conium).

Demise of the hemlock

(23) Epileptogenic plants cause generalized tonoclonic seizure activity through several mechanisms, including massive nicotinic receptor stimulation (poison hemlock, wild tobacco), gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) antagonism in the CNS (water hemlock), postsynaptic inhibition of inhibitory glycine receptors in the spinal cord (strychnine), and profound hypoglycemia (imported unripe ackee or breadfruit tree fruit).

The syndromic classification, differential diagnosis, management, and prevention of potentially fatal plant poisonings in Louisiana and the Gulf South

At a controlled location, people and their dogs will avoid dangers that exist in the forest like poison ivy, poison oak, and poison hemlock, he pointed out.