Re: A little information on hemlock

A little information is a dangerous thing;
Drink deep, or take a very long detour of at least fifty miles around the
good old Pierian spring.

'Hemlock' is a very vague name given to various plants. The hemlock that
Socrates is said to have drunk comes from an umbelliferous plant, _Conium
maculatum_, which is not native to the United States, and its presence in a
wood in Washington is most unlikely. Its principal poisonous substance is
coniin. There is a loosely related group of umbellifers in the United
States called water hemlock, _Cicuta_ species, whose poison is cicutoxin.
But the most common use of the name 'hemlock' in the USA is, I think, to
refer to the hemlock tree, a coniferous tree and one of several _Tsuga_
species, none of which is poisonous.

I have seen accounts of Socrates' death that claim that he would have
suffered painful convulsions as he went. These are symptoms of _Cicuta_
poisoning but not, as far as I can discover, of poisoning by _C. maculatum_.

RH