More and more areas are blooming with wild parsnip.
State and county resource managers advise people to avoid skin contact with the toxic sap of the plant tissue by wearing gloves, long sleeves and long pants.
The juice of wild parsnip in contact with skin in the presence of sunlight can cause a rash and blistering and discoloration of the skin (phytophotodermatitis).
Wild parsnip was added to Koochiching County’s noxious weed order in the last couple years, according to Dennis Hummitzsch, Koochiching County land commissioner, who is in charge of handling noxious weeds in Koochiching.
Many county residents have experienced the painful rash that can occur when skin comes in contact with the plant in sunlight.
“In the last five years it has become very prevalent across the county,” said Hummitzsch, of wild parsnip.
A native of Europe and Asia, this plant has escaped from cultivation; it is grown as a root vegetable, and is common throughout the U.S.
Wild parsnip, or pastinaca sativa, is a monocarpic perennial herbaceous plant (plant spends one or more years in rosette stage, blooms under favorable conditions, and then dies), 6 feet high in the rosette stage and 4 feet high on stout, grooved stems in the flowering stage.
It readily moves into disturbed habitats, along edges and or in disturbed patches. It invades slowly, but once population builds it spreads rapidly and can severely modify open dry, moist, and wet-moist areas.
