Ever so umbel

In woods and fields and on roadside verges, clouds of Queen Anne's Lace, a.k.a.  Cow Parsley, are in flower.

As usual there is loads of it at Filnore. It can be waist high or even up to your shoulder.

 The abundance of it is a pleasure but the individual flowers also repay a closer inspection.

It has a smaller cousin the Pignut, which only grows about a foot high

It is flowering now too, both in the grassland .. .. ..   

.. .. .. and more modestly in the woodland

The leaves of pignut are hard to find in the grass but in the wood you can see how finely divided they are. 

Compare them with the larger, more ferny leaves of cow parsley 

Cow parsley leaves

and the gross leaves of Hogweed (yet to flower)

Hogweed leaves

All three of these plants are in the family Apiaceae producing their flowers in an umbrella-shaped structure known as an umbel.