Cicuta maculataL.

water hemlock

WFO wfo-0000604489 Accepted WFO 2026-06 7 photographs CC0 / CC BY In the accuracy benchmark

Plate 1 figs. a–g

Cicuta maculata, photographed by Ryan Sorrells
fig. a Ryan Sorrells, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-26 / obs. 200863465
Cicuta maculata, photographed by Eric Knight
fig. b Eric Knight, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199821265
Cicuta maculata, photographed by Violet T.
fig. c Violet T., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199827903
Cicuta maculata, photographed by Josiah Londerée
fig. d Josiah Londerée, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 186462017
Cicuta maculata, photographed by Ashwin Srinivasan
fig. e Ashwin Srinivasan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 158320417
Cicuta maculata, photographed by mefisher
fig. f mefisher, CC0 1.0 / obs. 151722988
Cicuta maculata, photographed by Mary Krieger
fig. g Mary Krieger, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 155056925

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 1,141 observations

Peak flowering in Jul, from 1,141 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 21 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Cicuta arguta Greene
  • Cicuta bolanderi S.Watson
  • Cicuta cinicola A.Nelson
  • Cicuta curtissii J.M.Coult. & Rose
  • Cicuta dakotica Greene
  • Cicuta dakotica var. pseudomaculata Lunell
  • Cicuta dakotica var. pseudovirosa Lunell
  • Cicuta douglasii var. occidentalis M.E.Jones
  • Cicuta grandifolia Greene
  • Cicuta maculata var. curtissii (J.M.Coult. & Rose) Fernald
  • Cicuta mexicana J.M.Coult. & Rose
  • Cicuta occidentalis Greene
  • Cicuta occidentalis f. arizonensis H.Wolff
  • Cicuta occidentalis f. californica H.Wolff
  • Cicuta occidentalis f. oregonensi-idahoensis H.Wolff
  • Cicuta occidentalis f. wyomingensis H.Wolff
  • Cicuta subfalcata Greene
  • Cicuta valida Greene
  • Cicuta victorinii Fernald
  • Cicuta virosa var. maculata J.M.Coult. & Rose
  • Cicutaria maculata Lam.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.