![\"\"](\"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/Cow_parsley_-_geograph.org_.uk_-_447979.jpg\" "\\"\\"")
<\/a>Cow Parsley has a variety of other names – like most of our plants, it seems. The nicest, which is what I remember my rather severe paternal grandmother calling this plant, is Queen Anne’s Lace. That is a lovely name and seems very appropriate for the pretty delicate umbels of this plant.<\/p>\n
Another name, far less pretty, is ‘Kek’. There’s something about words that end with a hard ‘k’ sound that seems unpleasant. Although I don’t know any of them, there seem to be a disproportionately high number of swear words that end with ‘k’. I don’t expect you can think of any of them either.<\/p>\n
Kek sounds rude, Cow Parsley sounds fittingly agricultural but rather dull, whereas Queen Anne’s Lace sounds delightful. But I am enjoying the look of this plant strung along the roadsides at this time of year.<\/p>\n
What’s in a name? A rose by any other name… Do you have favourite or least favourite wildlife names?<\/p>\n
Mark Avery is an independent environmental expert and writer. He spent 25 years working for the RSPB in the UK – the last 12 years of that time as the Conservation Director. Mark writes a daily blog about wildlife issues in the UK and has written several books including one which will be published in August.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There is lots of cow parsley in flower by the roadsides at the moment. As a hopeless botanist – or plant-identifier – I like cow parsley because I usually recognise it and know what it is. Cow Parsley has a variety of other names – like most of our plants, it seems. The nicest, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":2192203,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/05\/Cow_parsley_-_geograph.org_.uk_-_447979.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6984,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs","category-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2192203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/focusingonwildlife.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}