English: Rough chervil.
Name: from the Greek elements chairo meaning to please, and phyllon meaning a leaf; temulum or temulentum means drunken.
Genus: ± 43 species.
Region: most of Europe, rare in the Mediterranean region; Maghreb, Western Asia, Turkey, Caucasus.
Habitat: ruderal; pioneer species; variety of situations, damp places, waterside thickets; open woodland, woodland edges, waste places; walls and fences; both lowland and hilly country.
Content: volatile alkaloid chaerophylline; glycosidally bound toxins; polyyne falcarinol; compound falcarinone.
Use: herbal medicine; poisonous.
BotanyHerb; somewhat hispid; biennial.
Key: distinguishable by being the first of the common roadside species to flower after
Anthriscus sylvestris, hairy, purple-spotted stems, swollen tops to the internodes.
Stems: up to 100 cm; solid; swollen below nodes; purple-spotted or wholly purple.
Leaves: bi-pinnate to tri-pinnate; dark green; appressed-hairy on both surfaces; longipetiolate;lobes mostly 10–20 millimetres, ovate in outline, deeply toothed, the teeth contracted abruptly at the apex; cotyledons tapered gradually at base without distinct petiole.
Inflorescence: umbels,compound, bearing usually 6 to 12, occasionally 4 to 15; hairy rays usually 1 to 5 centimetres long; peduncle longer than rays, hairy; terminal umbel with mostly hermaphrodite flowers, overtopped by lateral umbels, with mostly male flowers; bracts absent, or rarely 1 to 2; bracteoles 5 to 8, shorter than pedicels, ciliate, eventually deflexed.
Flowers: white; sepals absent; outer petals not radiating; styles with enlarged base, forming stylopodium; flowering late May to early July.
Pollenination: solitary bees.
Fruit: usually 5–6 millimetres; slightly laterally compressed, oblong but narrowing toward apex, constricted at commissure; mericarps having broad, rounded ridges; carpophore present; vittae solitary, conspicuous; pedicels without a ring of hairs at apex; styles roughly as long as stylopodium, recurved; stigma capitate.
Chromosome number: 2n = 14, 22.