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