''Cicuta virosa'', the cowbane or northern water hemlock, is a poisonous species of ''

Cicuta ''Cicuta'', commonly known as water hemlock, is a genus of four species of highly poisonous plants in the family Apiaceae. They are perennial herbaceous plants which grow up to tall, having distinctive small green or white flowers arranged in a ...

'', native to northern and central Europe, northern Asia and northwestern North America.

Description

It is a

perennial In horticulture, the term perennial ('' per-'' + '' -ennial'', "through the year") is used to differentiate a plant from shorter-lived annuals and biennials. It has thus been defined as a plant that lives more than 2 years. The term is also ...

herbaceous Herbaceous plants are vascular plants that have no persistent woody stems above ground. This broad category of plants includes many perennials, and nearly all annuals and biennials. Definitions of "herb" and "herbaceous" The fourth edition of ...

plant which grows up to 1–2 m tall. The stems are smooth, branching, swollen at the base, purple-striped, and hollow except for partitions at the junction of the

leaves A leaf (: leaves) is a principal appendage of the stem of a vascular plant, usually borne laterally above ground and specialized for photosynthesis. Leaves are collectively called foliage, as in "autumn foliage", while the leaves, stem, ...

and stem. In cross section the stems have one flat side and the other sides are rounded. The leaves are alternate, tripinnate, only coarsely toothed, unlike the ferny, lacy leaves found in many other members of the family ''

Apiaceae Apiaceae () or Umbelliferae is a family of mostly aromatic flowering plants named after the type genus ''Apium,'' and commonly known as the celery, carrot, or parsley family, or simply as umbellifers. It is the 16th-largest family of flowering p ...

''. The

flower Flowers, also known as blooms and blossoms, are the reproductive structures of flowering plants ( angiosperms). Typically, they are structured in four circular levels, called whorls, around the end of a stalk. These whorls include: calyx, m ...

s are small, white and clustered in umbrella shaped inflorescences typical of the family. The many flowered umbellets have unequal pedicels that range from 5 to 11 cm long during fruiting. An oily, yellow liquid oozes from cuts to the stems and roots. This liquid has a rank smell resembling that of

parsnips The parsnip (''Pastinaca sativa'') is a root vegetable closely related to carrot and parsley, all belonging to the flowering plant family Apiaceae. It is a biennial plant usually grown as an annual. Its long taproot has cream-colored skin an ...

or carrots. The plant may be mistaken for parsnip due to its clusters of white tuberous

root In vascular plants, the roots are the plant organ, organs of a plant that are modified to provide anchorage for the plant and take in water and nutrients into the plant body, which allows plants to grow taller and faster. They are most often bel ...

s. It grows in

wet meadow A wet meadow is a type of wetland with soils that are Solubility, saturated for part or all of the growing season which prevents the growth of trees and brush. Debate exists whether a wet meadow is a type of marsh or a completely separate type of ...

s, along streambanks and other wet and marshy areas.

History

Scholars dispute whether a hemlock of the genus ''Cicuta'' or the genus ''

Conium ''Conium'' ( or ) is a genus of flowering plants in the family Apiaceae. , Plants of the World Online accepts six species. All species of the genus are poisonous to humans. ''C. maculatum'', also known as hemlock, is infamous for being highly ...

'' served in ancient

Greece Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...

as a state poison, administered as a method of capital punishment. The Greek

philosopher Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

Socrates Socrates (; ; – 399 BC) was a Ancient Greek philosophy, Greek philosopher from Classical Athens, Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and as among the first moral philosophers of the Ethics, ethical tradition ...

drank a cup of some kind of hemlock infusion at his execution in 399 BC. ''Cicuta virosa'' is however primarily a northern European species, rare or absent from the Mediterranean region, making its use in Greece unlikely. See Poison hemlock for more information. The dose of hemlock used for Greek executions was not always immediately fatal, and sometimes it proved necessary to administer a second cup of the poison. :''...having drunk all the Hemlock juice, the quantity was found insufficient and the executioner refused to prepare more unless he was paid 12

drachma Drachma may refer to: * Ancient drachma, an ancient Greek currency * Modern drachma The drachma ( ) was the official currency of modern Greece from 1832 until the launch of the euro in 2001. First modern drachma The drachma was reintroduce ...

s.'' :—from an account of the execution of

Phocion Phocion (; ''Phokion''; c. 402 – c. 318 BC), nicknamed The Good (, was an Athens, Athenian wikt:statesman, statesman and strategos, and the subject of one of Plutarch's ''Parallel Lives''. Phocion was a successful politician of Athens. He beli ...

in 318 BC Considering the extreme toxicity of ''Cicuta virosa'', this passage provides further evidence that it was not the species of hemlock used. In the past, this plant has had a number of colorful names, including Mackenzie's water hemlock, Beaver-poison, Children's-bane, Snakeweed and Musquash-poison.

Toxicity

The plant contains

cicutoxin Cicutoxin is a naturally-occurring poisonous chemical compound produced by several plants from the family Apiaceae including water hemlock ('' Cicuta'' species) and water dropwort (''Oenanthe crocata''). The compound contains polyene, polyyn ...

, which disrupts the workings of the

central nervous system The central nervous system (CNS) is the part of the nervous system consisting primarily of the brain, spinal cord and retina. The CNS is so named because the brain integrates the received information and coordinates and influences the activity o ...

. In humans, cicutoxin rapidly produces symptoms of

nausea Nausea is a diffuse sensation of unease and discomfort, sometimes perceived as an urge to vomit. It can be a debilitating symptom if prolonged and has been described as placing discomfort on the chest, abdomen, or back of the throat. Over 30 d ...

emesis Vomiting (also known as emesis, puking and throwing up) is the forceful expulsion of the contents of one's stomach through the mouth and sometimes the nose. Vomiting can be the result of ailments like food poisoning, gastroenteritis, pregna ...

and

abdominal pain Abdominal pain, also known as a stomach ache, is a symptom associated with both non-serious and serious medical issues. Since the abdomen contains most of the body's vital organs, it can be an indicator of a wide variety of diseases. Given th ...

, typically within 60 minutes of ingestion. Poisoning can lead to

tremor A tremor is an involuntary, somewhat rhythmic muscle contraction and relaxation involving neural oscillations, oscillations or twitching movements of one or more body parts. It is the most common of all involuntary movements and can affect the h ...

s and

seizures A seizure is a sudden, brief disruption of brain activity caused by abnormal, excessive, or synchronous neuronal firing. Depending on the regions of the brain involved, seizures can lead to changes in movement, sensation, behavior, awareness, o ...

. A single bite of the root (which has the highest concentration of cicutoxin) can be sufficient to cause death. In animals the toxic dose and the lethal dose are nearly the same. One gram of water hemlock per kilogram of weight will kill a sheep and 230 grams is sufficient to kill a horse. Due to the rapid onset of symptoms, treatment is usually unsuccessful.

Fossil record

''Cicuta virosa''

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserve ...

fruit halves are described rare in the

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch (geology), epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.33 to 2.58Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

but common in the

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( ; referred to colloquially as the ''ice age, Ice Age'') is the geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fin ...

interglacial An interglacial period (or alternatively interglacial, interglaciation) is a geological interval of warmer global average temperature lasting thousands of years that separates consecutive glacial periods within an ice age. The current Holocene i ...

floras of the

East European Plain The East European Plain (also called the Russian Plain, "Extending from eastern Poland through the entire European Russia to the Ural Mountains, the ''East European Plain'' encompasses all of the Baltic states and Belarus, nearly all of Ukraine, ...

.The

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch (geology), epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.33 to 2.58Belarus Belarus, officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe. It is bordered by Russia to the east and northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Belarus spans an a ...

and its correlation with other

by Felix Yu. VELICHKEVICH and Ewa ZASTAWNIAK - Acta Palaeobotanica 43(2): 137–259, 2003

References

External links

Ancient Poisons
{{Taxonbar, from=Q27609 Apioideae Flora of Europe Flora of temperate Asia Flora of West Himalaya Flora of Alaska Flora of Canada Plants described in 1753 Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus