wild parsnip

British  

noun

1. a strong-smelling umbelliferous plant, Pastinaca sativa, that has an inedible root: the ancestor of the cultivated parsnip

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Example Sentences

“The egg white is cattails. The yolk is pickled heirloom tomatoes in a broth of wild parsnip juice. I use willow bark to make the home fries, and squash as bacon.”

From The New Yorker • Aug. 22, 2016

On Kodiak Island the sites were covered with stinging nettles and wild parsnip; over burial sites elderberries were common.

From Time Magazine Archive

In the old days, people had carried around these little chunks of wild parsnip root to protect themselves from poisonous snakes, and so what if rattlesnakes had always been as rare as money in Milagro?

From "The Milagro Beanfield War" by John Nichols

Let me caution all emigrants to Illinois not to handle too familiarly the "wild parsnip," as it is commonly called, an umbelliferous plant growing in the moist prairies of this region.

From Letters of a Traveller Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America by Bryant, William Cullen

The wild parsnip is also indigenous to the plains on the mountains.

From Eight Years' Wanderings in Ceylon by Baker, Samuel White, Sir