Umbels Tall and Fair

Comments on Umbels Tall and Fair

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Oh wow! Those are beautiful! We don't have hemlock here and I had no idea they looked like that.

I think my notes here may not have highlighted that enough: this is not hemlock, it is a look-alike plant that also has umbels!

I am not sure whether it is cow parsley or cow parsnip.

Here is an article discussing which umbelliferous plant Tolkien himself saw back in 2017 and was remembering, with photos:

https://eybirdwatching.blogspot.com/2014/06/a-hemlock-by-any-other-name.html

But whichever plant mine was, it was magical to see, even under the sun, rather than the moon, and I tried to capture that a bit.

I'm glad you like it!

 

Oh, that was just my utter lack of knowledge about these plants; I assumed cow parsley and cow parsnip were types of hemlock. I had a book as a child with a drawing of Queen Anne's Lace (which I thought so pretty!) and your photo had reminded me of it, and Ijust thought it must have been another type of hemlock. After reading through your link (thank you!) I see it's actually another name for cow parsley. (Which is such a sweet name, although kind of the opposite end from Quuen Anne's!) Thanks to your post I now also know what an umbel is.

And I love the ladybird, btw!

I am ao glad you mentioned about the trees! 

So, not having either plant here, when I read Tolkien’s description of Luthien dancing among the hemlock, I imagined the plants to be small flowering things on the forest floor. Years later another book described how the characters took shelter from the rain under the boughs of a hemlock, which naturally puzzled me. So I looked them up, only, I searched for "hemlock forest", which returned only photos of the conifer. So my imagining of Luthien (and Edith) dancing changed to an odd flowering form of conifer! After seeing your post, and the link, I thought I'd got muddled about the trees. I did search for "hemlock" again, this time without the "forest", and only the flowering plant came up. Très confusticating!😆 I am so glad to have this all sorted out now, and my image of Luthien's grove restored!

You know, I always quite liked the term umbel and imagined large flowers, but I never knew much about them until your images piqued my curiosity.  So, now I know that the term is from the Latin umbella, meaning parasol, which is what they look like.  I also didn't know the flowers are characteristic of the parsley and carrot family or about hemlock umbels.  Thank you!