Western snakeroot

Sanicula crassicaulis, commonly known as Pacific blacksnakeroot or western snakeroot, is an erect perennial herb of the family Apiaceae native to the Pacific coast of North America from British Columbia south through Washington, Oregon and California to Baja California, with disjunct populations in Chile, growing in shaded woodlands, oak savannas, chaparral edges and grassy slopes. The plant arises from a stout taproot to 50 to 120 centimetres tall, with stout, ribbed, somewhat fleshy, simple to sparingly branched glabrous stems. The basal and lower stem leaves are long-petiolate and palmately three- to five-lobed or divided, with broadly ovate to obovate, irregularly and sharply toothed lobes 4 to 10 centimetres across, while the upper leaves become smaller and more deeply dissected. Tiny five-petalled yellow to greenish-yellow flowers are crowded into small dense subglobose umbellets, the few umbellets in turn arranged in loose compound umbels subtended by small bracts. The fruit is a small ovoid schizocarp 3 to 5 millimetres long, densely covered with hooked uncinate prickles that adhere to animal fur.