The town of Tweed will be calling on Hastings County to initiate a spraying program across the county to deal with the “poisonous parsnip issue.”
The issue was raised at Tuesday’s meeting of Tweed council.
Mayor Don Dejenova tells Quinte News that seeds are often blown around from other communities.
“The children pick flowers for someone. In this case the substance, the secretion from the plant itself is toxic. It burns your skin. That’s why it’s important that we try and address this particular noxious weed.”
He adds that the idea is to control toxic weed as best they can, and that’s why they believe if it’s done at the county level they’ll have much better success in controlling it at large.
“That’s the problem. We noticed a big batch, for example, growing by our playground in our hamlet of Marlbank.
“We had to get out there right away and eradicate that, because children in particular would be more susceptible picking that than an adult. But adults don’t even know what it is, there are severe burns that you can get from this. Severe burns”
“We believe if it’s done at the county level we’ll have much better success in controlling it at large,” he said, “It would be great if it could be done at the provincial level, so we could just get rid of it entirely, but that would never happen.”
The noxious plant looks like Queen Anne’s Lace but has a yellow flower, instead of white.
The noxious plant looks like Queen Anne’s Lace but has a yellow flower, instead of white.
Mayor Dejenova added, “The problem now is how it’s starting to make its way into the farmers’ fields. So we gotta get a handle on this the best we can.”
