Conium

Conium is a genus of flowering plants in the family Apiaceae. As of December 2020, 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 poisonous. Hemlock is native to temperate regions of Europe, North Africa and Western Asia. The species C. chaerophylloides, C. fontanum, and C. sphaerocarpum are all native to southern Africa.

• And eagerly she kist me with her tongue,
  And under mine her wanton thigh she flung.
  Yea, and she soothd me up, and calld me sire,
  And usde all speech that might provoke, and stirre.
  Yet like as if cold Hemlock I had drunke,
  It mocked me, hung downe the head, and sunke.
  • Ovid, Amores, 6 (tr. Marlowe)

• BURGUNDY [lamenting the neglect of France]:
  Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart,
  Unpruned dies; her hedges even-pleach'd,
  Like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair,
  Put forth disorder'd twigs; her fallow leas
  The darnel, hemlock and rank fumitory
  Doth root upon, while that the coulter rusts
  That should deracinate such savagery;
  • Shakespeare, Henry V, V, 2, 45

• BANQUO [perhaps describing hemlock or henbane]:
  Were such things here as we do speak about?
  Or have we eaten on the insane root
  That takes the reason prisoner?
  • Shakespeare, Macbeth, I, 3

• THIRD WITCH: Root of hemlock digged i’the dark,
  • Shakespeare, Macbeth, IV, 1

• CORDELIA [on her father]:
  Alack, 'tis he: why, he was met even now
  As mad as the vex'd sea; singing aloud;
  Crown'd with rank fumiter and furrow-weeds,
  With bur-docks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers,
  Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow
  In our sustaining corn. ...
  • Shakespeare, King Lear, IV, 4, 4

• O Gods! that ever anie thing so sweete,
    So suddenlie should fade awaie, and fleete!
  Hir armes are spread, and I am all unarm’d,
    Lyke one with Ovid’s cursed hemlocke charm’d;
  • Thomas Nashe, The Choise of Valentines

• Stinking’st of the stinking kind,
  Filth of the mouth and fog of the mind,
  Africa, that brags her foyson,
  Breeds no such prodigious poison,
  Henbane, nightshade, both together,
  Hemlock, aconite—
  • Charles Lamb, "A Farewell to Tobacco"

• And bring me the flag that is moist with the wave,
    And the rush where the heath-winds sigh,
  And the hemlock plant, that flourishes so brave,
    And the poppy, with its coal-black eye;
  And weave them tightly, and weave them well,
    The fever of my head to allay;—
  And soon shall I faint with the death-weed smell,
    And sleep these throbbings away.
  • Ann Taylor, "The Maniac’s Song" (1808)

• Through thy battlements, Newstead, the hollow winds whistle;
  Thou, the hall of my fathers, art gone to decay;
  In thy once smiling garden, the hemlock and thistle
  Have choked up the rose which late bloom’d in the way.
  • Lord Byron, "On Leaving Newstead Abbey"

• My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
    My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
  Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
    One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
  • John Keats, "Ode to a Nightingale" (wr. 1819; pub. 1820)

• Bring out the hemlock! bring the funeral yew!
  The faithful ivy that doth all enfold;
  Heap high the rocks, the patient brown earth strew,
  And cover them against the numbing cold.
  • Emily Lawless, "Dirge of the Munster Forest, 1581"

• He lookèd from his loft one day
  To where his slighted garden lay;
  Nettles and hemlock hid each lawn,
  And every flower was starved and gone.
  • Thomas Hardy, "The Two Men"

• The grass, forerunner of life, has gone,
  But plants that spring in ruins and shards
  Attend until your dream is done:
  I have seen hemlock in your yards.
  • Gordon Bottomley, "To Iron-Founders and Others"

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Conium