Photography And Half-Thoughts By Mitchell Hegman

...because some of it is pretty and some of it is not.

Sunday, July 5, 2015

The Living Fireworks Display


Cow Parsnip plants can launch themselves up to eight feet above the ground before mid-summer.  Once they reach high above all the plants that surround them, they explode into clusters of flowers that resemble brilliant white firework displays frozen in mid-explosion.

The stem of the cow parsnip plant is edible.  According to one of my reference books, Plants of the Rocky Mountains, cow parsnip was widely used by native peoples as a vegetable.

That girl and I started our Fourth of July at the cabin surrounded by cow parsnips.  I have posted a couple of photographs I captured of the flower clusters.  Most of the flowers at the cabin are between four and five feet above the ground.


--Mitchell Hegman

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