Health warning over spread of deadly hemlock

NEW colonies of hemlock, the deadly plant which poisoned the Greek philosopher Socrates in 399BC, are spreading southwards through Midlothian, according to a leading archaeological botanist.

Dr Brian Moffat, the director of a long-term archaeological dig at the site of Scotland’s largest medieval hospital on Soutra Hill, near Lauder, claims there is a real danger hemlock could contaminate grain and other crops as it becomes established in fields as well as roadside verges.

The excavations at Soutra by Dr Moffat and his team over a 17-year period have demonstrated how Augustinian monks who ran the hospital were using controlled doses of hemlock and other plants to anaesthetise patients prior to surgery and amputation. But now he is concerned the robust, plants will pose a health and environmental hazard if their progress continues unchecked.

So far, hemlock has not been listed as an agricultural weed, and its presence in fields is apparently being largely ignored by farmers and landowners.

"There are at least two distinct new habitats where hemlock is expanding beyond where experienced botanists have recorded them," Dr Moffat said. "It has become a weed in arable fields, particularly where cereals and oil-seed rape are grown.

"It does not confine itself to the field edges, but is now growing among the crops, so there is plainly a serious risk of this potentially lethal plant contaminating the harvest and its products. There is a lot of bare ground where it can thrive, thanks to set-a-side arrangements."

The second new seeding ground has been roadsides, where ground has been repeatedly dug up for pipe-laying and other construction projects.

Dr Moffat believes there is a strong case for the introduction of measures to keep hemlock out of cultivated fields.

The main danger to the general public comes when hemlock is eaten by mistake, sometimes with devastating consequences.

In one well documented case two years ago, a leading brain surgeon, Dr David Currie, was extremely ill after accidentally consuming the toxic plant.

Dr Moffat warns that some local species are traditionally gathered from hedgerows, and hemlock can be all too easily mistaken for the similar celery-like stems of sweet cicely.