The Ditch Apothecary

Send me one plant or mushroom you are about to pick, cook, touch, or clear. I write back what it most likely is, the poisonous lookalike it could be, the one field check that separates them, and the parts to keep hands off. Every claim comes with a source you can follow: field guides, university extension, or peer-reviewed literature. What I cannot source gets cut. My range is temperate North America, worked from one real Iowa ditchline: poison hemlock and water hemlock, pokeweed, burdock, motherwort, and the weeds that grow beside them. Outside that range I tell you I cannot source it before you pay, not after. Send clear, well-lit photos: the whole plant, the leaf arrangement, the stem base, the flower or seed head, and a rough location. If the photos cannot decide the plant, I say so and you owe nothing. I will not tell you to eat anything from a photograph. That is not caution, it is the point.